THE ARENA.
EDITED BT B. O. FLOWER.
vol. vm.
PUBLISHED BT
ARENA PUBLISHING CO,
Boston, Mass.
1898.
Ml:;.- \ry
HWVEksiTV CALIFORNIA
DAVIS
Copyrighted, 1893,
By TILE ARENA PUBLISHING CO.
The Pinkham Peess, 289 Congress Street, Boston
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CONTENTS.
Page
Insanity and Genius Arthur McDonald 1
The Liberal Churches and Scepticism . . M. D. Shutter, D. D. 18
Women Wage-Earners. No. VI Helen Campbell 32-
Save the American Home I. E. Dean 39
Arsenic versus Cholera • . R. B. Leach, M. D. 61
Does the Country Demand the Free Coinage of Silver? . . A. C. Fisk 57
Freedom in Dress Frances E. Russell 70
Union for Practical Progress B. O. Flower 78
Our National Flower 92
Symposium Advocating the Maize.
Pres. J. M. Coulter. Mart Newbury Adams.
Charles J. O'Malley. M. K. Craig.
Margaret Sidney. Will Allen Dromgoole.
Ellen A. Richardson. Eliza Calvert Hall.
Islam, Past and Present .... Prof. F. W. Sanders, A. M. 115
Parisian Fashionable Folly (Illustrated) . . . . B. O. Flower 130
Our Foreign Policy Wm. D. McCrackan, A. M. 145
Bimetallic Parity C. Vincent 151
Reason at the World's Congress of Religions . . Rev. T. E. Allen 161
Women Wage-Earners. No. VII Helen Campbell 172
Innocence at the Price of Ignorance . . Rabbi Solomon Schindler 185
The Money Question C. J. Buell 101
Christ and the Liquor Problem Geo. G. Brown 201
The Realistic Trend of Modern German Literature Emil Blum, Ph. D. 211
The Bacon-Shakespeare Case 222
Verdict No. I.
Alfred Russel Wallace, D. C. L. O. B. Frothing ii am.
The Marquis of Lorne. G. Kritell.
Rev. C. A. Bartol. Aptleton Morgan, LL. D.
Henry George. Franklin H. Head.
Frances E. Willard.
The Confessions of a Suicide Coulson Kern ah an 240
The Charities of Dives A. R. Carman 24tf
Who Broke up De MeetV? . . . Will Allen Dromgoole 255
Pure Democracy ts. Vicious Governmental Favoritism . B. O. Flower 200
The New Crusade (Poem) Benjamin Hathaway 273
Monometallism Senator W. M. Stewart 277
Our Industrial Image James G. Clark 2.<rt
Office of the Ideal in Christianity Carol Norton 2\U
ill
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IV THE ARENA.
Page
Mask or Mirror (with illustrations) B. O. Flower 304
The Financial Problem W. H. Standish 314
The Real and Unreal God Rev. W. H. Savage 320
Inebriety and Insanity .... Leslie E. Keeley, M. D. 328
Some Important Problems Confronting Congress . . . A. C. Fisk 338
A Practical View of the Mind Cure . . . Joseph L. Hasbrouck 346
How to Rally the Hosts of Freedom .... Rev. Henry Frank 355
The Bacon-Shakespeare Case 366
Verdict No. II.
Edmund C. Stedman. Luther R. Marsh.
Edmund Gosse. Hon. A. A. Adee.
Prof. A. E. Dolbear. Prof. K. S. Shaler.
Hosanna of Ka-Bob: A Study in Religious Hypnotism. Forrest Crissey 379
Can It Be? (Poem) Warner Willis Fries 392
Well-Springs of Immorality B. O. Flower 394
A Money Famine in a Nation Rich in Money's Worth.
George C. Douglass 401
Seven Facts about Silver Hon. W. H. Standish 418
An Inquiry into the Laws of Cure M. W. Van Denburg, A. M., M. D. 430
Moral and Immoral Literature . . . Rev. Howard MacQueary 447
Japan and Her Relation to Foreign Powers . . . E. A. Cheney 455
The Currency Problem through a Vista of Fifty Years.
Albert Brisbane 467
Spiritual Phenomena from a Theosophic View, Ella Wheeler Wilcox 472
A Study of Benjamin Franklin E. P. Powell 477
The Bacon-Shakespeare Case 492
Verdict No. III.
Rev. M. J. Savage. William E. Sheldon.
Gen. Marcus J. Wright. George Makepeace Towle.
L. L. Lawrence. Mrs. Mary A. Livermore.
The Man Who Feared the Dark Herbert Bates 496
The New Education and the Public Schools . . . B. O. Flower 511
The Psychology of Crime Henry Wood 529
A Ready Financial Relief W. H. Van Ornum 536
Judge Gary and the Anarchists . . : . . M. M. Trumbull 544
Richard A. Proctor, Astronomer . . Rev. Howard MacQueary 562
Silver or Fiat Money A. J. Warner 567
Aionian Punishment Not Eternal . . . W. E. Manley, D. D. 577
Mr. Ingalls and Political Economy . . Wm. Jackson Armstrong 592
The South Is American Joshua W. Caldwell 607
A Continental Issue Richard J. Hinton 618
A Free Church for America Wm. P. McKenzie 630
George Wentworth J. S. King, M. D. 633
In De Miz Lasalle Corbell Pickett 642
The Coming Religion . . % , ^ ^ , . B. O. Flower 647
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CONTENTS. V
Page
Thoughts in an Orphan Asylum . . . Rabbi Solomon Schindler 657
Shakespeare's Plays Richard A. Proctor 672
Medical Slavery through Legislation Henry Wood 680
The Slave Power and the Money Power . . C. W. Cram, M. D. 690
Knowledge the Preserver of Purity .... Laura E. Scammon 702
Is Liquor Selling a Sin? .... Helen M. Gougar, A. M. 710
A Study of Thomas Paine E. P. Powell 717
The Bacon-Shakespeare Case 733
Verdict No. IV.
Hon. Wm. E. Russell. , Andrew H. H. Dawson.
A. B. Brown. Henry Irving.
La Corriveau Louis Frechette 747
An Omen (Poem) * E. E. E. McJimsey 755
Three Gentlewomen and a Lady . . . Mary Jameson Judah 756
Gerald Massey: Poet, Prophet, and Mystic . . . B. O. Flower 767
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ILLUSTRATIONS.
Marion D. Shutter, D. D. Opposite page 1
Slelveless Grecian Robe 130
Modified Syrian Costume 131
Bicycle Costume: Side View 132
" 44 44 133
" " Front View 134
Ideal Costume 135
" With Sash 136
Street Costume 137
Sleeveless Grecian Robe 138
Studio Costume .139
Prevailing Paris Fashions at Various Periods .... 140
Street Costume 141
Turkish Costume 142
Bicycle Costume: Front View 143
Sleeveless Grecian Robe: Back View 144
Coulson Kern a HAN Opposite page 145
A. C. Fibk " " 273
CnARACTEB Representations of James A. Herne . " " 804
Some Bacon-Shakespeare Jurors " " 401
Mrs. General Pickett " "629
Richard A. Pboctob " 4i 657
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THE ARENA.
No. XLIII.
JUNE, 1893.
INSANITY AND GENIUS.
BY DR. ARTHUR MCDONALD.
Human beings may be classified, in a general way, into
normal and abnormal. By "abnormal" is meant departure
from the normal. While the term " abnormal " often sug-
gests ethical or aesthetical characteristics, it is here em-
ployed with no such reference. Thus a great reformer and
a great criminal are both abnormal in the sense of diverging
much from the average or normal man.
Human abnormality may be divided into three general
forms — insanity, genius, and crime. The third form, " crime,"
includes all excessive degrees of wrong.
Assuming the natural history point of view, man should
be studied as we study all species below him. In an investi-
gation, therefore, of insanity and genius, we must, as far as
possible, eliminate all those ethical and aesthetical ideas
(however important) that we have been accustomed to
associate with these terms ; for an empirical study is con-
cerned with facts, rather than with sentiments, emotions, or
ideals connected with such facts.
INSANITY.
Krafft-Ebing* defines insanity, from the anatomical point
of view, as a diffuse disease of the brain, accompanied with
nutritive, inflammatory, and degenerative changes. The
division between mental and brain diseases is purely a prac-
• - PiychUtrie," 1800. ~" — —
Copyrighted 1893, by the Arena Publishing Co. 1
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2 THE AKEKA.
tical one, and not strictly scientific. Mental diseases are a
special class of cerebral diseases, and from a clinical stand-
point are distinguished by psycho-functional disturbances.
Insanity is not only a disease of the brain, but also a diseased
alteration of the personality. One difficulty in distinguish-
ing between sanity and insanity is due to the fact that the
manifestations of one can correspond exactly to those of the
other. The first symptoms are not generally intellectual, but
emotional ; there is abnormal irritability. The fluctuating
line between sanity and insanity, as frequently seen in public
and private life, can, says Krafft>Ebing, oscillate between the
extremes of genius and mental disease. Such men show
peculiarities in thought, feeling, and action ; they are called
strange or foolish because the great majority of men feel or
act otherwise. So their combinations of ideas are uncommon,
new, striking, and often interesting ; yet they are not capable
of making use of these new thoughts. Such individuals are
not yet insane, but still they are not quite right. They form
the passage over to insanity; they are on the threshold.
They are so eccentric as to be said to have a strain of madness
in them. Maudsley * calls this an " insane temperament " ;
it is characterized by a defective or unstable condition of
nerve element, a tendency to sudden caprices, to act inde-
pendently of the social organism ; a personal gratification
that seems to others a sign of great vanity. But they are so
engrossed in their own impulses as not to be conscious of
how it affects others. In Maudsley's opinion, this predispo-
sition to insanity lies close to genius in some cases. He says
such pseudo-geniuses are numerous in public life; they
believe themselves on the way to weighty discoveries and
humanitarian enterprises, which turn out to be unfruitful ;
some are inventors, improvers of the world, revolutionary
heroes, creators of new sects, to whose plans an agitated
public sometimes lends a willing ear, but whose work neces-
sarily fails, because it is only a " mental flash of a puzzled
head," and not a ripened result out of the development of
civilization.
Some persons having this insane temperament may be
called mattoids, to use Lombroso's expression. They are
strikingly peculiar, eccentric, and original, but generally in
useless ways ; they show disproportionate development ; they
• " Pathology of Mind."
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INSANITY AND GENITT8. 8
are closely allied by heredity to mental disease, and may
gradually develop into this state. Thus one member of a
family may show genius, another be insane or epileptic.
This may indicate an extreme sensibility in the family, which
under different conditions of life and body has taken differ-
ent forms. This extreme nervous sensibility may endow a
person with genius, but not the highest genius; for he lacks
the power of the critical sense and the vast intelligence of
the genius, which permits him to correct his wild imagina-
tion. The insane temperament shows originality, but lacks
the critical spirit; the ordinary normal mind has some
critical spirit, but lacks originality; the genius possesses both
originality and critical power.
Clouston says that there are a number of examples of
insane temperaments ranging from inspired idiots to inspired
geniuses ; that De Quincey, Cowper, Turner, Shelley, Tasso,
Lamb, and Goldsmith may be reckoned as having had in some
degree the insane temperament. Some are original, but in
the highest degree impracticable and unwise in the conven-
tional sense of the term. Another form of this temperament
is sometimes illustrated in spiritualism, thought reading,
clairvoyancy, and hypnotism.
The pseudo-genius, or mattoid, is, then, one who has the
insane temperament, with originality and particular talents
in certain lines, and often displays a mixture of insanity
and genius. In the words of Maudsley, he desires to set
the world "violently right"; under mental strain he is im-
pulsive, and may be attacked with derangement. A weaker
and much less important class of mattoids is the egotistic
variety, with no capacity to look at self from an outside
standpoint. This self-feeling may widen into the family,
but develops no further. This class considers its oddities
higher than the virtues of others. Another phase is illus-
trated by those who have little sympathy for their own kind ;
they often have extreme affection for some dog or cat, and
suppose that they are exceedingly humanitarian because
they love animals more than human beings.
Hammond* says that "the discrimination of the very
highest flights of genius from insanity is a difficult, and at
times an impossible, undertaking, for they may exist in one
and the same person." Hammond also is of the opinion
• " Treatise on Insanity," New York, 1883.
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4 THE AEENA.
that more people of great genius exhibit manifestations of
insanity than do persons with ordinary mental faculties. He
mentions as showing symptoms of insanity, or at the close of
life passing into fatuity, Tasso, Burns, Swift, Mozart, Haydn,
Walter Scott, Blake, and Poe.
Schiile * defines insanity as a disease of the person, resting
upon and caused by a brain affection. Here it is to be
understood, psychologically speaking, that a pathological
symptom does not constitute the essence of a mental disturb-
ance, be the thought ever so broken or the disposition or
action ever so anomalous. Hallucinations under certain con-
ditions can appear temporarily, or superstition can come
within the range of specific mental disease, and yet there
is no insanity. In true mental disease the whole person must
be included, so that in his thoughts, feelings, and actions
he is no more determined by motives which may be changed
by reflection and conclusion, but by irremovable feelings and
ideas upon the ego, which, if called up, exercise an incon-
testable superior power. It is the mental compulsion that
constitutes the essence of mental derangement. The patient
often stands under its power as a whole personality ; at
another time he is theoretical or reflective as to this force
over him ; but the distinctive point is that he cannot clear
it away, nor overcome it through logic, nor stop it by his
will. This compulsion is grounded in a fundamental organic
brain disease.
According to Arndt, f our manner of knowing, feeling, and
willing is differently developed, and shows itself in feeble
or strong constitutions, as nervousness, weakness, or insanity ;
or as gift, talent, or genius. Every mental disease is a reac-
tion of the nervous system impaired in its nutrition, espe-
cially the nutrition of the brain. Arndt's idea is that when
a nervous condition appears occasionally in parents and grand-
parents, it sooner or later passes over into mental disease, as
seen in children of aged parents born late, or in children of
parents with talent or genius. In the first case (in children
born late) this nervous condition develops with the decrease
of vital energy ; in the second case it comes from the nature
of the higher endowment or genius. This endowment or
genius is an expression of a highly organized nervous system,
• " Klinische Psychiatrie."
t " Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie."
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INSANITY AND GENIUS. 5
more particularly that of the brain. Thus it is that all
higher gifts, including genius, are very frequently subject to
all kinds of diseased conditions, peculiarities, idiosyncrasies,
and perversities. Arndt mentions as examples among poets,
Tasso, Lenau, Heinrich, Von Kleist, Holderin, Gutzkow ;
among artists, Robert Schumann, Carl Blechen ; among
scientists, Pascal, Frederic Sauvages, John Miiller, Robert
von Meyer ; among statesmen and generals, Tiberius and the
Duke of Marlborough. A large number of geniuses were
the last of their kind; as Democritus, Socrates, Plato, Aris-
totle, Caesar, Augustus, Galenus, Paracelsus, Newton,
Shakespeare, Leibnitz, Kant, Voltaire, Gustave Adolphus,
Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Linn6, Cuvier, Byron, and
Alexander von Humboldt. The family of Schiller has died
out in its male members. This dying out of genius can only
be explained, according to Arndt, by the weakness of the
organizations, and the resulting hyperesthesia. This also is
an explanation of the fact that the brothers and sisters of
geniuses are often mediocre and sometimes weak minded.
GENIUS.
Moreau of Tours* holds that genius is the highest ex-
pression, the ne plus ultra of intellectual activity, which is
due to an over-excitation of the nervous system and in this
sense is neurotic; that disease of the nervous centres is a
hereditary condition, favoring the development of the intel-
lectual faculties. He maintains, on the basis of biographical
facts, that among distinguished men one finds the largest
number of insane; that the children of geniuses are inferior
even to those of average men, owing to convulsions and
cerebral diseases in infancy. Genius is always isolated; it is
a summurn of nature's energy, after which her procreative
forces are exhausted. Mental dynamism cannot be exalted
to genius, unless the organ of thought is in a condition analo-
gous to that of an abnormal irritability, which is also favor-
able to the development of hereditary insanity. When the
mind reaches its highest limit it is in danger of falling into
dementia. The cerebral troubles of great men, from simple
nervousness to normal perturbation, are the natural, if not
necessary effects, of their organization.
• •• Piycboiogie Morbide."
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6 THE ARENA.
* L61ut also considers genius a nervous affection, a semi-
morbid state of the brain, f Nisbet holds that genius and
insanity " are but different phases of a morbid susceptibility
of, or a want of balance in, the cerebrospinal system."
" Whenever a man's life is at once sufficiently illustrious and
recorded with sufficient fulness, he inevitably falls into the
morbid category." Huxley says: u Genius, to my mind, means
innate capacity of any kind above the average mental level.
From a biological point of view, I should say that a ' genius '
among men stands in the same position as a fc sport ' among
animals and plants, and is a product of that variability which
is the postulate of selection. I should think it probable
that a large proportion of 4 genius sports ' are likely to come
to grief physically and socially, and that the intensity of
feeling, which is one of the conditions of what is commonly
called genius, is especially liable to run into the fixed ideas
which are at the bottom of so much insanity." Lombroso f J
says that from an anatomical and biological study of men of
genius, who are semi-insane, from an investigation of the
pathological causes of their apparition, marks of which are
almost always left in their descendants — with all this in view,
there arises the conception of the morbid, degenerative nature
of genius.
While, then, some alienists hold that genius is a pathologi-
cal condition of the nervous system, a hyperesthesia, a ner-
vous or mental disease, others do not go so far; yet all seem
to be agreed that the relation between insanity and genius is
very close.
As an introduction to the biographical study of genius,
it will be interesting to give the opinions of geniuses them-
selves.
Aristotle says that under the influence of a congestion of
the head there are persons who become poets, prophets, and
sibyls. Plato § affirms that delirium is not an evil but
a great benefaction when it emanates from the divinity.
Democritus || makes insanity an essential condition of poetry.
Diderot ^f says, " Ah, how close the insane and the genius
* "Demon de Socrate."
t " The Insanity of Genius," London, 1891.
X "L'Homme de Genie."
§ Fhaedo.
|| Horace, ars Poetica.
1 Dictionnaire Encyclopedique.
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INSANITY AND GENTTO. 7
touch; they are imprisoned and enchained, or statues are
raised to them." Voltaire says : " Heaven, in forming us,
mixed our life with reason and insanity; the elements of our
imperfect being; they compose every man, they form his
essence." Pascal says : " Extreme mind is close to extreme
insanity .'' Mirabeau affirms that common sense is the ab-
sence of too vivid passion; it marches by beaten paths, but
genius never. Only men with great passions can be great.
Cato * said, before committing suicide, " Since when have I
shown signs of insanity ? " Tasso said, " I am compelled to
believe that my insanity is caused by drunkenness and by
love ; for I know well that I drink too much." Cicero speaks
of the "furor poeticus" Horace of the "amabilis insania"
Lamartine of " the mental disease called genius." Newton, in
a letter to Locke, says that he passed some months without
having a " consistency of mind."
Chateaubriand says that his chief fault is weariness, dis-
gust of everything, and perpetual doubt. Dryden says, " Great
wit to madness nearly is allied." Lord Beaconsfield says:
** I have sometimes half believed, although the suspicion is
mortifying, that there is only a step between his state who
deeply indulges in imaginative meditations and insanity.
I was not always sure of my identity or even existence, for I
have found it necessary to shout aloud to be sure that
I lived."*
Schopenhauer confessed that when he composed his great
work, he carried himself strangely, and was taken for insane.
He said that men of genius are often like the insane, given
to continual agitation. Tolstoi acknowledged that philo-
sophical scepticism had led him to a condition bordering on in-
sanity. George Sand says of herself, that at about seventeen
she became deeply melancholic; that later she was tempted
to suicide ; that this temptation was so vivid, sudden and
bizarre that she considered it a species of insanity. Heine J
said that his disease may have given a morbid character to
his later compositions.
However paradoxical such sayings may seem, a serious
investigation will show striking resemblances between the
highest mental activity and diseased mind. As a proof of
• Plutarch.
t "Contarlni Fleming.*'
t u Correspondance Intdlte," Paris, 1877.
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8 THE ARENA.
this, we will give a number of facts, to which many more
might be added.
BIOGRAPHICAL FACTS SHOWING ECCENTRICITIES, NERVOUS
DISEASES, AND SYMPTOMS OF INSANITY.
The difficulty of obtaining facts of an abnormal or patho-
logical nature and otherwise unfavorable, is obvious. Au-
thors have not only concealed such data, but have not
deemed them important enough to record. It is due to the
medical men, whose life brings them closest to abnormal real-
ity, that such facts have been gathered. If it be said that
the abnormal or exceptional must be taken with some cau-
tion, because it is natural for the mind to exaggerate striking
characteristics, it must be remembered that such facts, when
unfavorable to reputation, are concealed. In the study of
any exceptional or abnormal individual, as the insane or
genuis, one finds much more concealed than is known.
Socrates had hallucinations from his familiar genius or
demon. Pausanias, the Lacedaemonian, after killing a young
slave, was tormented until his death by a spirit, which pur-
sued him in all places, and which resembled his victim.
Lucretius was attacked with intermittent mania. Bayle says
this mania left him lucid intervals, during which he composed
six books, " De Rerum Natura" He was forty-four years of age
when he put an end to his life. Charles the Fifth had epi-
leptic attacks during his youth ; he stammered. He retreated
to a monastery, where he had the singular fantasy of cele-
brating his own funeral rites in his own presence. His
mother (Jane of Castile) was insane and deformed; his
grandfather (Ferdinand of Arragon) died at the age of sixty-
two, in a state of profound melancholia. Peter the Great,
during infancy, was subject to nervous attacks, which degen-
erated into epilepsy. One of his sons had hallucinations,
another convulsions. Caesar was epileptic, of feeble consti-
tution, with pallid skin, and subject to headaches. Linn6,
a precocious' genius, had a cranium hydrocephalic in form.
He suffered from a stroke of paralysis. At the end of one
attack he had forgotten his name. He died in a state of
senile dementia. Raphael experienced temptations to
suicide.* Pascal,! from birth till death, suffered from ner-
• •• Raphael/' pages de la vingtieme annee^
t " L'Amulette de Pascal," 1846.
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INSANITY AND GENIUS. 9
vous troubles. At one year of age he fell into a languor,
during which he could not see water without manifesting
great outbursts of passion ; and still more peculiar, he could
not bear to see his father and mother near one another. In
1627 he had paralysis from his waist down, so that he could
not walk without crutches ; this condition continued three
months. During his last hours he was taken with terrible
convulsions, in which he died. The autopsy showed pecu-
liarities. His cranium appeared to have no suture, unless,
perhaps, the lamboid or sagittal. A large quantity of the
brain substance was very much condensed. Opposite the
ventricles there were two impressions, as of a finger in wax.
These cavities were full of clotted and decayed blood, and
there was, it is said, a gangrenous condition of the dura
mater. Walter Scott, during his infancy, had precarious
health, and before the age of two was paralyzed in his
right limb. He had a stroke of apoplexy. He had this vision
on hearing of the death of Byron : Coming into the dining-
room, he saw before him the image of his dead friend ; on
advancing toward it, he recognized that the vision was due
to drapery extended over the screen. *
Voltaire, like Cicero, Demosthenes, Newton, and Walter
Scott, was born under the saddest and most alarming condi-
tions of health. His feebleness was such that he could not
be taken to church to be christened. During his first years
he manifested an extraordinary mind. In his old age he
was like a bent shadow.f He had an attack of apoplexy at
the age of eighty-three. His autopsy showed a slight thick-
ness of the bony walls of the cranium. In spite of his
advanced age, there was an enormous development of the
encephalon.J Michael Angelo,§ while painting " The Last
Judgment," fell from his scaffold and received a painful
injury to the leg. He shut himself up and would not see
any one. Bacio Rontini, a celebrated physician, came by
accident to see him. He found all the doors closed. No
one responding, he went into the cellar and came upstairs.
He found Michael Angelo in his room, "resolved to let him-
self die." His friend, the physician, would not leave him.
He brought him out of the peculiar frame of mind into which
• •• Edintrarg Medical and Surgical Journal," January, 1843.
t ftegur, "Mem./'t. I.
% R. Pariae, *' Philoeophle et Hygiene."
| " Hittoire de la Linture en Italie" (Reveille-Pariae).
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10 THE AEBNA.
he had fallen. The elder brother of Richelieu, the cardinal,
was a singular man ; he committed suicide because of a
rebuke from his parents. The sister of Richelieu was
insane. Richelieu himself had attacks of insanity ; he
Would figure himself as a horse, but afterwards would have
no recollection of it. Descartes, after a long retirement, was
followed by an invisible person, who urged him to pursue his
investigations after the truth. Goethe was sure of having
perceived the image of himself coming to meet him. Goethe's
mother died of an apoplectic attack. Cromwell, when at
school, had an hallucination in his room ; suddenly the cur-
tains opened, and a woman of gigantic stature appeared to
him, announcing his future greatness. In the days of his
power he liked to recount this vision. Cromwell had violent
attacks of melancholic humor ; he spoke of his hypochon-
dria. His entire moral life was moulded by a sickly and
neuropathical constitution, which he had at birth.
Rousseau was a type of the melancholic temperament,
assuming sometimes the symptoms of a veritable pathetic in-
sanity. He sought to realize his phantoms in the least sus-
ceptible circumstances ; he saw everywhere enemies and
conspirators (frequent in the first stages of insanity). Once,
coming to his sailing vessel in England, he interpreted the
unfavorable winds as a conspiracy against him, then mounted
an elevation, and began to harangue the people, although
they did not understand a word he said. In addition to his
fixed ideas and delirant convictions, Rousseau suffered from
attacks of acute delirium ; a sort of maniacal excitation. He
died from an apoplectic attack.
As space forbids giving further details, we will mention
some persons of great talent or genius who have shown symp-
toms of insanity : Saint Simon, Swedenborg, Haller, Comte,
Loyola, Luther, Jeanne d'Arc, Mohammed, Molidre, Lotze,
Mozart, Condillac, Bossuet, Madame de Stael, Swift, John-
son, Cowper, Southey, Shelley, Byron, Goldsmith, Lamb,
Poe, Carlyle, Keats, Coleridge, Burns, George Eliot, Alfred
de Musset, George Sand, Wellington, Warren Hastings, Bach,
Handel, Newton, Chateaubriand, Beethoven, Alexander the
Great, and Napoleon.
Additional biographical data concerning the different
types of genius might be added, and many will occur to
any one who hs\& read the lives of great men. In certain
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INSANITY AND GENIUS. 11
instances the authority for some of the facts might be
questioned, but the great majority will remain.
Precocity is a symptom of genius and insanity. Dante
composed verses at nine; Tasso and Mirabeau at ten; Comte
and Voltaire and Pascal were great thinkers at thirteen;
Niebuhr at seven; Jonathan Edwards, Bossuet and Pope
at twelve; Goethe before ten; Victor Hugo and F^nelon at
fifteen. Handel and Beethoven composed at thirteen; Mozart
gave concerts at six; Raphael was renowned at fourteen.
Yet some great men were regarded as poor pupils ; as, for ex-
ample, Pestalozzi, Wellington, Balzac, Humboldt, Boccaccio,
Linnl, Newton, and Walter Scott.
Originality is very common, both to men of genius and
the insane but in the latter case it is generally without pur-
pose. Hagen makes irresistible impulse one of the charac-
teristics of genius, as Schule (see above) does of insanity.*
Mozart avowed that his musical inventions came involunta-
rily, like dreams, showing an unconsciousness and sponta-
neity which are also frequent in insanity. Socrates says
that poets create, not by reflection, but by natural instinct.
Voltaire said, in a letter to Diderot, that all manifestations
of genius are effects of instinct, and that all the philosophers
of the world together could not have given " Les Animaux
Malades de la Peste" which La Fontaine composed without
knowing even what he did. According to Goethe, a certain
cerebral irritation is necessary to poets. Klopstock declared
that in dreams he had found many inspirations for his poems.
Thus as the great thoughts of genius often come spontane-
ously, so it is with the ideas of the insane.
Geniuses are inclined to misinterpret the acts of others,
and consider themselves persecuted. These are well-known
tendencies of the insane. Boileau and Chateaubriand could
not hear a person praised, even their shoemaker, without feel-
ing a certain opposition. Schopenhauer became furious and
refused to pay a bill in which his name was written with
a double " p." Unhealthy vanity is also common in the
ambitions of monomaniacs.
Alienists hold, in general, that a large proportion of men-
tal diseases is the result of degeneracy; that is, they are
the offspring of drunken, insane, syphilitic, and consump-
tive parents, and suffer from the action of heredity. The
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12 THE ARENA.
most frequent characteristics of mental diseases are : apathy,
weakness or loss of moral sense, impulsiveness, propensity
to doubt, verbosity or exaggerated acuteness, extreme vanity
or eccentricity, excessive preoccupation with one's own per-
sonality, mystical interpretations of simple facts, hallucina-
tions, abuse of symbols or special terms, sometimes suppress-
ing every other form of expression, and a general psychical
disproportion through an excessive development of certain
faculties, or by absence of others. The reader is particularly
requested to note these psychical symptoms of insanity ; for
almost all of them, as we shall see, are found in men of
genius. If X were substituted for insanity, and Y for gen-
ius, so as to dispel preconceived notions, an impartial observer
would be very liable to say that the characteristics of X and
Y bring them under the same general category. Also some
other physical characteristics of the insane are almost as fre-
quent in geniuses. They are : a symmetry of face and head,
irregularity in teeth, and rachitism. In the insane are fre-
quently found abnormally large or small ears or mouth; hare-
lips, hypertrophy of the under lip; gums wide or one-sided;
bent nose; hands unequal in size; abnormal growth of hair
over body; growth of beard on women and defective eye-
brows, etc. Cerebral anaemia is frequent, and hypersemia
very frequent, in the insane. Wildermuth, from an investi-
gation of one hundred and twenty-seven idiots, found sixty-
nine normal craniums. Meynert * says that one hundred
and fourteen out of one hundred and forty-two idiots show
signs of degeneration.
In order that some of the results may be seen more in
detail, we give some tables.f
Table I.
Cranial Capacity
in Cubic
Centimeters.
Men.
Average of 30 normal craniums
Average of 10 epileptic craniums
Women,
Average of 30 normal craniums
Average of 14 epileptic craniums
1,450
1,523
1,300
1,346
• Meynert, " Klinische Vorlesungen liber Psychiatric," 1890.
t Welcher's Schiller's Schftdel, etc.
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INSANITY AND GENIUS.
13
Here in Table I. (as in the case of men of talent and
genius in the following Table II.) we see that the abnormal
exceed the normal in brain development ; that is to say, in
these cases the insane and genius both exceed the normal
man in cranial capacity or weight of brain.
Table II.
Mex op Talknt
a>t> GEiacs.
Age.
Weight
of Brain
in
Grammes.
Medium
Weight of
Average
Brain at
Same Age.
Cranial
Capacity in
Cubic
Centimeters.
Horizontal
Circumfer-
ence in
Millimeters.
Webster (statesman) . .
Thackeray (humorist) .
Cuvier (scientist) . . .
Gauss (mathematician) .
Broca (anthropologist) .
Kant (philosopher) . .
Napoleon I. (general)
Darwin (scientist) . . .
Wagner (musician) . .
Dante
Schumann, Robert . .
Schwann (scientist) . .
Napoleon III
Mtiller (scientist) . . .
Liebig (chemist) . . .
Whewell (philosopher) .
70
52
63
78
66
70
72
1,520
1,600
1,829
1,492
1,485
1,500
1,352
1,390
1,303
1,368
1,340
1,246
1,331
1,303
1,740
1,493
1,510
1,550
564
503
600
565
614
Average of 35 men of
talent ......
65
1,474
1,319
-
-
Taking now five hundred and fifty-one millimeters as an
average horizontal circumference of the head, it will be seen
that Napoleon, Darwin, Wagner, Schwann, and Miiller ex-
ceed the normal. The averages of brain weight for the
different ages, given by Welcher, are not absolute, but suffi-
ciently near the truth for comparison.
Table m.
Weight
of Brain.
Number
of Brains.
Melancholia
Mania .
1,490.33
1,488.46
1,454
1,447.05
9
15
Old cases
23
Transition forms *
15
62
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14
THE AKEtfA.
If 1,350 grammes is taken as an average weight for a brain,
Table III. gives 62 insane much above the normal ; but this
is 62 out of 579 brains weighed. If we take the totals of
the 579, as given in Table IV., all are below the average
except the maniacs among men. The extreme divergence
from the average may be regarded as abnormal and in the
light of anomalies. To show more clearly the anomalous
nature of the brains of the insane, Table V. is given.
Table IV.
Total: Melancholia. .
" Mania ....
" Old cases . . .
44 Paralytics . .
44 Transition forms
Men
Women
Men
Women
Men
Women
Men
Women
Men
Women
1,295.18
1,210.37
1,376.41
1,221.09
1,319.22
1,175.74
1,214.82
1,068.24
1,330.03
1,190.03
We see, therefore, from these tables that particular indi-
viduals, among the insane and people of genius, both show
extremely large cerebral capacity ; but that in general the
insane are much below the normal, while the genius is
above in brain capacity or brain weight.
Table V.
Melancholia . .
Mania ....
Old cases . . .
Paralytics . . .
Transition forms
Men . .
53
Women .
51
Men . .
39
Women .
53
Men . .
86
Women .
31
Men . .
145
Women .
29
Men . .
43
Women .
49
1,052
1,035.65
1,035
1,057.40
1,032.81
1,048.88
1,055.06
Bischoff found some of the heaviest brains (weighing 1,650,
1,678, 1,770, and 1,925 grammes) among common and un-
known laborers. But such cases are very rare ; so much so,
that the average is not affected. De Quatrefages says that
the largest brain has been found in a lunatic, and the next
largest in a genius. The main fact brought out by the
tables is the large number of anomalies and deviations from
the normal in both insanity and genius.
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INSANITY AND GENIUS. 15
CONCLUSION.
The facts cited thus far would seem to indicate that genius
is not only abnormal, but often passes into a pathological
form. But it may be asked more particularly as to what is
meant by pathological and abnormal.
The modern and fundamental conception of disease is an
excess of normality. This statement can be supported by the
highest medical authorities. Virchow* says that substratum
upon which pathological manifestations play is a repetition or
reproduction of the normal morphological stratum ; its patho-
logical character consists in this, that the stratum arises in
an unfit way, or at the wrong place or time ; or it may de-
pend upon an abnormal increase of the tissue elements,
resulting in deviation, which becomes degeneration. Thus
in pathological relations, there is a preservation of specific
normal characteristics ; nothing new arises functionally.
Pathology is in potentia in physiology.
According to Perl, pathological phenomena are distin-
guished from the normal by their unequal and little constancy.
Cohnheim affirms that physiological laws hold their validity
in diseased organisms ; that abnormal means a considerable
deviation from the type. fZiegler says that disease is
nothing else than a life whose manifestations deviate in part
from the normal.
In saying that genius manifests the symptoms of a neuro-
sis or psychosis, we mean an excessive nervous or cerebral
action. Many forms of insanity are also manifestations of
similar excessive action. Such action in one individual can
give rise to most wonderful, original, and brilliant ideas, and
we call it genius ; in another individual it produces also
wonderful and original thoughts, but highly absurd, and we
call it insanity. But it appears that the fundamental cause
in both genius and insanity is the same : it is the excessive
psychical or nervous energy.
Some of the flights of genius are most brilliant and fascin-
ating, yet they are none the less abnormal ; and when this
abnormality reaches a certain degree, it can become patho-
logical. Thus Don Quixote has wonderful ideas; he is an
ardent soul with brilliant thoughts superior to the opinions
• •• Cellular Pathologie."
t " ▲llegemelne Path. Anatomic."
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16 THE ARENA.
of his contemporaries. Yet he renders no account of real
things; he is in the air; he takes his imaginations for reali-
ties; sees everything in his dream; he is without critical
spirit, and has little balance. Edgar Poe is full of fantasy,
invention, original creations, extreme notions, regardless of
critical spirit. Poe was somewhat dipsomaniac. While his
writings are remarkable, yet they have elements similar to
the wanderings of the insane.
Some characteristics of genius are originality, egotism,
vanity, indiscretion, and lack of common sense ; precocity,
sterility, irritability, impetuosity, melancholia, and suscepti-
bility to visions and dreams. These characteristics belong
also to the insane. If it be said that it is cruel to compare
much that we consider highest in the world with insanity,
the reply is, that we might as well object to classing man
among the bipeds, because vultures are bipeds. Any analy-
sis of genius that may show the closest relation to insanity
cannot change genius itself. Faust and Hamlet remain
Faust and Hamlet. The question is not a matter of senti-
ments but of facts. Genius and great talent are those forms
of abnormality most beneficial to society.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
ENGLISH.
Bastlan. The Brain as an Organ of Mind. —Beard. American Nervousness. 1887.
—Brewster. Life of Sir Isaac Newton. — Brewster. The Martyrs of Science. — Carlyle.
Reminiscences. — Coxe. Life of Marlborough. — Cross. Life of George Eliot.—
Cunningham, Allan. Lives of British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. — Davy, J.
Life of Sir Humphrey Davy. — Dowden. Life of Perry Bysshe Shelley.— Elze, Karl.
William Shakespeare. London. 1888.— Foster. Life of Charles Dickens. — Trevelyan,
G. O. Life of Macaulay. — Froude. Life of Lord Beaconsfield. — Galton, F. Heredi-
tary Genius.— Gill, W. J. Life of Edgar Allan Poe. — Gleig. Memoirs of the Life of
Warren Hastings. — Halliwell Phillips. Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare. 1886. —
Hamerton, P. G. Life of Turner. — Holmes. Life of Mozart. — Ireland. The Blot
upon the Brain. 1885. —Jacobs, Joseph. The Comparative Distribution of Jewish
ADility. Journ. Anthrop. Inst. Great Britain. 1886. — Jeafferson, J. C. The True
Lord Byron. —Jones, Be wee. Life of Michael Faraday. — Lockhart. Life of Burns. —
Lombroso. The Man of Genius. London, 1891. — Macaulay. Essay, Frederick the
Great. — Man of Genius, The. Book Review in New York Nation, Feb. 26, 1892.—
Mantegazza. Physiognomy and Expression. — Masson. Life of Milton. — Nisbet, J. F.
The Insanity of Genius. London. 1891. —Plutarch. Life of Pericles. — Reid, S.J.
Life of Sydney Smith. — Rocks tro. Life of Mendelssohn. — Ruskin. Modern Painters.
— Savage. Moral Insanity. 1886.— Southey. Life of Cowper.— Sou they, Cuthbert.
Life and Letters of Robert Southev. — Spedding. Life of Francis Bacon. — Spitta.
Life of John Sebastian Bach. — Wasilewski. Life of Robert Schumann.— Weiamann.
Biological Memoirs. 1889. — Wilson, C H. Life of Michael Angelo.
FRENCH.
Abrantes. Souvenirs historiques sur Napol6on. — Arago. Notices blographiques.
1855. — Bastian. Le Cerveau et la Pensee. — Bourrienne. Memoires sur Napoleon. —
Bugeault. Etude sur l'6tat mental de Rousseau. — Camp. Maxim de Souvenirs
litteraires. 1887. — Clement. Musiciens celebres. Paris. 1868. — Deterine. L'HereditS
dans les maladies du systeme nerveux. 1886. — Fere. La famine nevropathique.
Archives de Neurologic 1884. — Fetis. Biographic universelle des musiciens. Paris,
1868.— Flaubert, G. Lettres a Georges Sand. Paris. 1885— Flaurens. De la raison,
du genie et de la folie. — Henschel. Die famille Mendelssohn. — Herve. La circonvolu-
tion de Broca. Paris. 1888. — Joly, H. Psychologic des Grands Hommes. 1883.—
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INSANITY AND GENIUS. 17
Lamartine. Coon de literature II. — Lelut. Du Demon de Socrate; Amulctte de
Pa«cal. — Lays. Le oerveao et sea fonctions.— Marce. De la valour des ecrits de
alienee. Journal de medecine mentale. 1864. — Maupassant (de), Ouy. Etude su
Gustave Flaubert. Paris. 1886. — Meneval. Napoleon et Marie Louise. — Michon
Napoleon I. d'apres son ecriture. — Moreau (de Tours). Psychologie morbide. 1869. —
Neville, £. Maine de Biran, sa vie. 1864. —Perez. L'enfant de trois a sept. ana. 1886.
— Philomest. Les Fous litteraires. 1881. Reveille.— Parise. Physiologic et Hygiene
des hommes livres aux travaux de l'esprit. 1866.— Ribot. L'Heredite psychologique.
1878.— Royer. Voltaire malade. 1883. — Rousseau (son cerveau) Bulletin de la Soc.
d*anthrop. 1861.— 8egur. Histoire de Napoleon et de la Grande Armee. Wechniakoff.
Physiologte des Genles. 1876.
GEBMAX.
Bischoff. Hvingewichte bei munchener Gelehrten. — Dilthey. Ueber Einbildung-
skraft der Dichter. 1887.— Dohme. Kunst und KUnstler des Mittel-alters und der
Neuzeit. — Goetbe. Aus melnem Leben. 1878.— Hagen. Verwandtschaf t des Genies-
mit dem Irrsin. Berlin. 1877. — Heschl. Die tlefen windungen des Menschenhirnes.
1877.— Molescbott. Kreislauf des Lebens. Brief XVIII. — &dlitz (von), Carl. Scho-
penhauer von medlzineschen Standpunk. Dorpot. 1872. — Schilling, J. A. Psychia-
trische Briefe. 1863. — Wagner, Das Hirngewicht. 1877. — Welcker. Schiller's
SchadeL 1883.
ITALIAN.
Amoretti. Memoire storiche Bulla vita egli studi di Leonardo da Vinci. Milano.
1874.— Bettinelle. Dell entusiasmo nelle belle Arti. Milano. 1769. — Cancellieri-
Intorno uomini dotati di gran memoria. 1716. — Costanzo. Follia anomale. Parlermo-
1876.— Canesterini. n cranio dj Fuslneeri. 1875. — Lombroso. Pazzia di Cordano.
1866. — Lombroso. Sul mancinismo motovio e sensorio nei sani e negli alienati.
Torino. 1886. — Lombroso. Tre Tribuni. 1889.— Lombroso. L'uomo di genio. To-
rino. 1888. — Mantegazza. Sul cranio dl Foscolo. Firenze. 1880.— Mantegazza. Del
nevrostamo dei grand! uomini. 1881. — Mastriani. Sul genio e la follia. Napoli. 1881.
— Pisani-Dossi. I Mattoidi e 11 monumente a Vittorio Emanuele. 1886. — Renzis (de).
L' opera d' un pazzo. Roma. 1887.— Tebaldi. Ragione e Pazzia. Milano. 1884.—
Verga. Iipemania del Tasso. 1860. — Villari. Vita di Savonarola. — Zoja. La Testa
di S scarpa. 1880.
OTHER LANGUAGES.
Baillet. De praecocibus eruditis. 1715. — Klefeker. Biblioth. eruditorum proca-
rium. Hamburg. 1717.— Mejia, Ramos. Neurosis de los hombres celebres de la
hlstoria Argentina. Buenos Ayres. 1886. — Menke, G. De ciarlataneria eruditorum.
1780.
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THE LIBERAL CHURCHES AND SCEPTICISM.
BY BEV. MARION D. SHUTTEB, D. D.
Addison, in relating a story of a sea voyage, says that
there was an atheist on board, and that the sailors, when they
heard of it, were curious to see what an atheist was like,
44 supposing him to be some strange sort of fish." The pop-
ular understanding of such terms as * 4 sceptic " and ** infidel "
is correspondingly vague and unsatisfactory, and justifies a
few preliminary definitions. The first Christians were called
44 atheists " by their pagan neighbors, because they denied
Jupiter and Mars; and according to Max Miiller, even to-day
44 Some of Christ's best disciples are among those whom so-
called believers call unbelievers." Exact definition may
also be a benefit to preacher as well as hearers. In one of
Fielding's novels there is a chapter entitled, " An essay to
prove that an author will write the better for having some
knowledge of the subject upon which he writes."
For these reasons, the writer begins his paper with a
DEFINITION OF SCEPTICISM.
The word 44 sceptic " comes from the Greek 44 skeptikos"
thoughtful, reflective; the verb being u skeptesthai" to look
carefully about, to view with caution, to consider well.
We get from it, therefore, according to Webster, " One
who is yet undecided as to what is true ; an inquirer after
facts and reasons." Emerson, in his essay on Montaigne,
thus describes the attitude of the sceptic: "I neither affirm
nor deny. I stand here to try the case. I am here to con-
sider, skopein, to consider how it is. I will try to keep the
balance true." Scepticism of this sort, surely, we have no
reason to prevent or discourage; no desire to do so. Rather
would we see honest inquiry increased, and bid it God-
speed! May sceptics of this class be multiplied, not only
outside but within the churches, until traditional creeds give
way to or justify themselves before the intelligence of the age.
There is another definition: "A person who doubts or
disbelieves (that is, does not yet believe) the existence or
18
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THE LIBERAL CHURCHES AND SCEPTICISM. 19
perfection of God, or the truth of revelation; one who dis-
believes (or fails to believe, for disbelief is not unbelief)
the divine origin of the Christian religion." The doubt
element is the first mentioned in this definition, and is the
principal one, as the inquiry element was in the other. In
this case investigation shades off into more or less of uncer-
tainty. An infidel denies outright, says, " This is not so; it
cannot be; I will not believe it." A sceptic doubts, says,
u I know not exactly what to believe; I cannot accept the
old; I hesitate about the new." His condition is well
described by a modern poet, who speaks for himself: —
Wandering between two worlds, one dead,
The other powerless to be bom,
With nowhere yet to rest my head,
Like these, on earth, I wait forlorn.
The sceptic is the doubter. We must thus differentiate
him from the atheist, infidel, and scoffer. He is none of
these. He stands by himself. His case is to be considered
upon its own merits.
I shall therefore confine this paper to scepticism proper —
that uncertainty about religious things in general; that spirit
of doubt which prevails so widely as to characterize this gen-
eration. What shall be the liberal preacher's attitude ? Is
there anything to be said or done by him that will — I do
not say remove — but reduce the uncertainty of men ? May
we not be able to direct at least some persons who walk with
faltering step over heaving ground, to more solid footing?
This paper proceeds, it is almost needless to say, upon
the assumption that the doubter is sincere. With him who
is merely captious and fault finding, or who doubts because
it is the fashion, we have nothing to do.
For certain reasons it seems to me that in the liberal
churches this whole subject of scepticism can best be handled.
A rigid orthodoxy has done much — I do not say everything
— to drive men into their doubts. The deliverance, so far
as it may be effected, must come from other sources. But of
course there are other reasons for the questioning attitude.
Recent revelations in science, the discovery of secondary
causes, as well as of the processes by which nature carries on
her operations, have also done much to create distrust of the
First Great Cause; while the aspect of the world and many
of life's experiences are held to contradict the thought of a
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20 THE ABENA.
central goodness in the universe. These factors must not be
overlooked in analyzing the scepticism of to-day.
To return to the first. " It must be confessed," says Theo-
dore Christlieb, " that the church theology of the last century
was chiefly to blame for the general apostasy which then
began. For this spirit, we theologians have only ourselves
to thank. We are now reaping what we ourselves have
sown." A rigid orthodoxy has required too much of men;
has " bound heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and
laid them upon men's shoulders." One extreme inevitably
breeds another. Irrational theories of inspiration, of deprav-
ity, of atonement, of future punishment, of the character
of God, of the person and work of Jesus Christ, have driven
thousands to question whether God himself exists, whether
he has ever spoken, whether Jesus did anything for man-
kind, and whether there be another life when this is ended.
Truth never dwells in extremes. " Extremes," says De la
Bruyere, " are vicious and proceed from men. Compensation
is just and proceeds from God."
The way in which doubts thus engendered have too often
been treated has helped confirm them. Times without num-
ber have those who began to question traditional creeds been
denounced; warned that doubt was " devil-born " ; charged
with framing excuses for looseness of life; or, as the extrem-
est reach of Christian charity, been accounted insane. Im-
moral or crazy — this has been the alternative. When the
pilgrims have gotten into Doubting Castle, there have not
been wanting those who hasted to follow the example of the
grim giant in the allegory: —
He getteth him a grievous crab-tree cudgel, and goes down into
the dungeon to them, and there first falls to rating of them, as if they
were dogs, although they gave him never a word of distaste. Then
he falls upon them and beats them fearfully in such sort that they
were not able to help themselves, or to turn them upon the floor.
It has been assumed, if not directly affirmed, that no one
could go to. heaven unless he believed in hell, or be a servant
of God without recognizing the devil; that one who hoped
other men might not be damned was in deadly peril of being
damned himself; that he who refused to believe that God
was n monster was himself, as Falstaff would put it, " but
little better than one of the wicked." Long ago Frederick
Robertson sounded a solemn and impressive warning.
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THE LTBEKAL CHURCHES AND SCEPTICISM. 21
And it matters not in what form that claim to infallibility is made:
whether in the clear, consistent way in which Rome asserts it, or
whether in the inconsistent way in which churchmen make it for
their church, or religious bodies for their favorite opinions — wher-
ever penalties attach to a conscientious conviction, be they the pen-
alties of the rack and flame, or the penalties of being suspected and
avoided and slandered, and the slur of heresy affixed to the name,
till all men count him dangerous lest they too should be put out of
the synagogue; let any man ^ho is engaged in persecuting any
opinion ponder it — these two things must follow — you make
fanatics and you make sceptics; believers you cannot make.
Moreover, the old theology has nothing to offer tcnlay to
the doubter but the very things that helped bring him into
his present condition. I gratefully acknowledge that many
in the ancient folds have advanced; but the creeds, with cer-
tain recent modifications, are substantially the same, and the
interpretations of them from the pulpit are largely the same.
Many of the laity, indeed, are beyond their instructors. They
are generally the first to perceive that there is any new light
in the world. The light is long in getting from the pew to
the pulpit, longer still in reaching the denominational press,
and when at last it penetrates to the theological seminary —
ages have rolled away!
I say, therefore, that the world's doubts must be dealt with
in the liberal churches. They can more easily adjust them-
selves to the intellectual needs of their time. They are not
creed-bound. They are not obliged to turn to the catechism
or confession, framed some hundreds of years ago, to see
what must be done with ideas that were then unknown. I
trust that no liberal minister has taken an oath: " So help
me God, I will never have a new idea! My thought shall be
the same yesterday, to-day, and forever! " God still speaks
in the conscience, and is perpetually revealing himself in
science and history. The liberal churches hold on, indeed,
to the past, to all of value, of beauty, of truth, it contained;
but they do not believe that wisdom died with the fathers;
they do not believe it will expire with the sons!
In dealing with the subject of scepticism, it must be
conceded that the utmost we can hope to accomplish is to
reduce the perplexity and lessen the uncertainty that prevail
among men. The time will probably never come when all
doubt will be banished from the human mind. There are
those whom we might almost call born sceptics, whose
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22 THE ARENA.
pathetic prayer through life is, " Lord, help mine unbelief,"
who may never see with clear vision till they stand in the
Ineffable Presence.
It must be also conceded that there are many problems,
religious as well as scientific, which, here at least, we shall
not be able to solve. We beat against them in vain, and fall
back, baffled and defeated, to the earth. Even to the psalmist,
" Clouds and darkness were round about Him," and the
Almighty is himself represented as asking Job, " Canst thou
by searching find out God?" Before tjie mysteries of this
universe, through which no ray of light pierces, daily must
we humble ourselves in the dust. We feel with Cowper,
"God never meant that man should scale the heavens by
strides of human wisdom." The jaunty way in which so
many clergymen dismiss these subjects, saying, " Oh, there is
no trouble ; it's only your own obstinacy and wiKul blind-
ness!" suggests that they themselves cannot have thought
deeply or' experienced profoundly. There is an anecdote
related of the little daughter of President Finney, that will
illustrate the nonchalance with which many people, much
further advanced in years, dispose of the loftiest subjects of
religious thought. It was a common thing for inquirers to
call for religious conversation at the house of Finney. One
such caller was met at the door by the bright six-year-old
daughter of the preacher. To the inquiry whether her father
was at home, she replied, " Papa's out, and mamma's out;
but walk right in, poor dying sinner, and I'll talk to you.
I know the whole plan of salvation ! "
Let us further admit that the things of religion are in
a sphere where mathematical certainty is impossible. We
cannot prove the existence of God as we can prove that the
sum of all the angles of a triangle is equal to two right
angles. Not so do we prove the life to come ; nor yet the
record of the past as given in the Bible. God and Eternity
cannot be written down in labelled propositions. Religion is
something more than exercise in logic. Spiritual facts and
forces set at naught the chalk and blackboard. They defy
all methods of physical research. "Eye hath not seen nor
ear heard." They are not revealed through the telescope.
The deep saith, They are not with me ; and the sea saith,
They are not with me.
There are times when doubt assails the faith of the
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THE LIBEKAL CHURCHES AND SCEPTICISM. 28
sturdiest believer. No one walks in entire panoply. There
are joints in every harness through which scepticism some-
times slips its shafts. Experiences come to all, at times, that
make them feel, either God is not, or he is not good. Even
around the cross gathered a darkness that made the pure and
exalted sufferer exclaim, " My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me ! " The soul that goes on obedient to duty shall
have the best assurance in the shadow; for " We know that
we know him, if we keep his commandments." Let him go
forward, as Edward Arnold's hero in the " Light of Asia."
Surely at last, far off, some time, somewhere
The veil would lift for his deep searching eyes,
The road would open for his painful feet ;
That should be won, for which he lost the world.
And Death might find him conqueror of death.
BENEFITS OF SCEPTICISM.
While for these reasons we do not look for the *day when
questionings shall cease among men, there is something to be
$aid for doubt itself. It is infinitely better than unthinking
repose. Indeed, it has been the pioneer of the world's prog-
ress, blazing the original pathway through untraversed
forests of thought and life. It has been well said, "Few
discoveries have been made by chance; and when they are,
it is the sceptic's brain which turns them to account." It is
this same inquiring, reflective, doubting character of mind
which has made all progress possible. The savage went, for
no one knows how long, with only rude stone implements.
Finally is produced a sceptic, who sees crude copper melted
in the fire, or discovers that it can be beaten into shape : and
straightway he doubts whether the stone hatchet of his an-
cestors be the best possible weapon, and with that scepticism
comes a step upward for the tribe. We might look at the
growth of our social institutions and find the same record of
discontent with existing conditions : of scepticism of estab-
lished limitations ; of faith and hope toward something else
and better. And Christianity itself was founded by the scep-
tic Jesus, who dared to say, " It was said by them of old time
one way, but I say unto you another and a different thing,"
and who suffered death upon the cross for his scepticism —
and his faith.
It is often a sign of growth in the individual, an intima-
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24 THE AKENA.
tion that some cherished belief has done for you all it can,
and that you must seek something else. Old influences do
their work and drop off, as the plant casts its old buds and
stems that its life may flow up higher into better develop-
ments. Men will, if they grow, cast many of their old ideas,
beliefs, and associations ; they do not deliberately reject them ;
they leave them, with sadness often, because they hold no
more of value. We are walking through an orchard. The
growths of many years are about us. Leaf and blossom are
waving above us. There is a sighing among the boughs.
The apple blossom is mourning because her beautifully
twisted petals are falling one by one to the ground. She is
losing the treasures of their fairness and fragrance. Foolish
blossom ! Do you not know you are losing these petals
because you have already begun to develop into something
better ? Do you not know that these have been cast off by
the forces already at work in your bosom — forces which are
bringing you to your fruitage ? You are on your way to
autumn, and in its mellow light you will see that the loss of
your dainty petals was your real gain. We lose old thoughts
and beliefs and habits, that we may obtain something better,
that our lives may be grander and richer in fruitage of
thought and of deed.
Scepticism is also one of the means of our training and disci-
pline. The poet Lessing said, "If God should hold out to me in
one hand perfect infallible truth, and in the other the privilege
of seeking for truth, I would reply, * O, God ! truth is for
thee alone ; give me the joy and the labor of seeking for it.' "
When some one exclaimed within the hearing of Thomas
Erskine, " Oh, if we only could have an infallible church, an
unerring guide ! " he replied : " Such a thing, if it could be,
would destroy all God's real purpose with man, which is to
educate him, and make him feel that he is being educated ;
to waken perception in the man himself, a growing percep-
tion of what is true and right, which is the very essence of
all spiritual discipline. Any infallible authority would
destroy this, and so take away the meaning of the church
altogether."
This, too, must be said, that no one has a right to stifle
his doubts. When they cease to be mere flitting shadows,
and become more or less permanent, he must fight his way
through them, to footing as solid as it may be possible tc
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THE LIBERAL CHURCHES AND SCEPTICISM. 25
obtain. He must do this without fear. Let him dismiss as
unworthy of his manhood the thought that God will send
him to perdition if he does not reach a certain result. "No
inquirer," says James Martineau, "can fix a direct and
clear-sighted gaze towards truth who is casting side glances
all the while on the prospects of his soul." Let him imitate
the friend of whom Tennyson wrote : —
He fought his doubts and gathered strength;
He would not make his judgment blind,
But faced the spectres of the mind
And laid them; thus he came at length
To find a stronger faith his own ;
And Power was with him in the night,
Which makes the darkness and the light,
And dwells not in the light alone.
TREATMENT OF SCEPTICISM.
In these struggles the minister may help if he is wise.
He must be patient and sympathetic. The club of the giant
in " Bunyan " is not for him. George Macdonald has well
said, " A minister is not a moral policeman." Well for him
if he has himself suffered being tempted, if his own heart
has been crushed, and his own brain has reeled beneath the
difficulties that .weigh upon others. Let him be perfectly
honest with men ; let him not require them to believe any
more than he believes himself. Let him avoid the appear-
ance of partisanship. He must impress men that he is
striving for truth, and not that he is merely battling for
a party. Above all, let him preach what is positive and
constructive, — seeking always rather to lay solid founda-
tions upon which men may build new dwellings, than to tear
down the crazy tenements they have themselves deserted.
Along two main lines must his work for the doubter —
nay, for all — be conducted. He must simplify the things
that are now complex, and direct attention to those things
which are already certain.
Let us first mention the
THINGS TO BE SIMPLIFIED.
Along this line we mu%t distinguish between religion itself
and its accidents or incidents. Religion is an inner life of
righteousness. " The church, the Bible, the creed, have been
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26 THE ARENA.
confounded with religion," says Mr. Beecher. "Religion is
the state of a man's soul; it is disposition and conduct.
Neither church nor book nor theology is of value except as
an educating' instrument. They have no sacredness of their
own. They are mere servants. Man alone as a son of God
and heir of immortality has an inherent sanctity." Religion
was in the hearts of men before it went into books. It was
in Moses and the prophets, before it went into the Old
Testament. It was in Jesus and his disciples, before it went
into the New. These books record the experiences of men
who were lifted into the presence of God ; but human error
and passion and prejudice stand side by side with the
descriptions of heavenly vision. The Bible is not the foun-
dation of religion. It is an outgrowth of religion. It con-
tains directions for the religious life ; but not in church or
creed or Bible, nor in any specific views of them, does religion
consist. These things help and educate, but the thing itself
is a good life. These may furnish fuel for the sacrifice, but
altar and offering and sacred fire are in the human heart.
" Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father
is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction,
and to keep himself unspotted from the world." These are
the two elements — a benevolent spirit and personal purity.
Mr. Whittier makes the above text the motto of one of his
most beautiful poems.
For he whom Jesus loved hath truly spoken:
The holier worship which he deigns to bless
Restores the lost, and binds the spirit broken,
And feeds the widow and the fatherless!
O brother man I fold to thy heart thy brother;
Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there;
To worship rightly is to love each other,
Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer.
Follow with reverent steps the great example
Of Him whose holy work was u doing good ";
So shall the wide earth seem our Father's temple,
Each loving life a psalm of gratitude.
The gospel itself must be reduced to the simple terms of Jesus.
If it had been left the plain, practical, unmysterious thing
he intended, it would never have encountered the doubts of
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THE LIBERAL CHURCHES AND SCEPTICISM. 27
to-day. Jesus asked men to believe in love — love to God,
love to men ! He asked them to believe in his own life as
exemplifying that love in both directions. To believe in
Christ is to believe in the life of love he lived, so that we
ourselves shall live it — not in him as a sort of mythological
being who was offered up to an angry God, or as God
himself.
In his " Creed of Christendom," Mr. W. R. Greg justly
writes: —
I have but one word more to say, and that is an expression of
unfeigned amazement that out of anything so simple, so beautiful, so
just, so loving, and so grand, could have grown up or been extracted
anything so marvellously unlike its original as the current creeds of
Christendom. Out of the teaching of perhaps the most sternly anti-
sacerdotal prophet who ever inaugurated a new religion, has been
built up about the most pretentious and oppressive priesthood that
ever weighed down the enterprise and the energy of the human
mind. Out of the life and words of a master whose every act and
accent breathed love and mercy and confiding hope to the whole
race of man, has been distilled a creed of general damnation and
black despair.
Emerson says: —
We boast the triumph of Christianity over paganism, meaning
the victory of the spirit over the senses; but paganism hides itself
in the uniform of the church. Paganism has only taken the oath of
allegiance, taken the cross, but is paganism still, outvotes the true
men by millions of majority, carries the bag, spends the treasure,
writes the tracts, elects the minister, sends missionaries to the
heathen, and persecutes the true believer.
We can sympathize, therefore, with the little fellow who
was attentively studying the map of the world. "What
place are you looking for, Willie?" inquired the father.
The small boy knit his brow and travelled a circuitous route
with his forefinger before he answered, earnestly, " Tryin'
to find Christendom." He is not the first person who has
been puzzled in his search. Let us try to locate some of its
real boundaries, for the benefit of the sceptic.
Another thing along the line of simplification is to give
the world a rational theory of the Bible — a theory in
harmony with the best results of modern scholarship — that
shall substitute for the old mechanical and artificial view,
one " reflecting the shadows and lights of history ; showing
life as it was actually lived by men at various stages of the
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28 THE ARENA.
world's progress, under varying degrees of light, as recogniz-
ing different standards of morals and manners, and as subject
to very varied formative conditions and forces."
For the doubts of a central goodness, that rise from the
aspect of the world and the experiences of human life, we
may do much by substituting the recent theory of development
for the old argument of design; that is, design in its narrow
sense. In this view the calamities of men, the misfortunes
of the world, and the sufferings of the individual are seen
to be, not inflictions from a divine hand, visited in wrath,
but the necessary incidents of a state of ignorance and
imperfection, whose trend is in the main towards light and
beauty and goodness.
From the things to be simplified, we turn to the
THINGS THAT MAY NOW BE REGARDED AS CERTAIN.
The stability of nature; the regularity of her laws.
Whatever may fail, " the sunrise never failed us yet." What-
ever may be uncertain, the snowflakes will fly, and the
spring will come, and seedtime and harvest return. From
the clamor of tongues, from the conflicts of creeds, from the
tossing of doubts, we may take refuge in the thought that
the world is established and her order fixed. Even those
things that seem to be most capricious are seen at length to
be under law. The wandering comet has been yoked to the
universal order. It will be so, at length, with earthquakes
and tornadoes. Nothing in nature is haphazard or goes slip-
shod. We are in a system whose laws are ordained in wis-
dom and goodness. Nature makes no mistakes. There is
no screw loose in the universe. The shower may be delayed
when the fields are parched, but the delay will at length be
justified. The sterner and severer operations effect a needed
end. These adverse forces have also a disciplinary effect
upon man: they bring out his resources, and make him strong
and wise. They teach him his dependence upon law, and
the necessity of obedience. He is under the care of provi-
dence, who is in harmony with the laws of nature. I should
take the emphasis away from specific and sporadic miracles,
and lay it upon the great miracle, the universal order.
The next thing certain is the sovereignty of duty.
Whatever may have been in the past, whatever may be in
the future, whatever may be in the mysteries that encompass
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THE LIBERAL CHURCHES AND SCEPTICISM. 29
us, one thing is certain : We must do right! The moral
laws of our being are imperative. In the deepest perplexity,
they do not cease to assert themselves. Whatever the clamor
about us, their voices pierce the din like the blast of the
archangel's trumpet. Let us fly to the ends of the earth,
they are with us. God or no God, we dare not do that
which will smirch our honor or degrade our manhood.
Heaven or no heaven, there is yet a kingdom on earth which
is righteousness. Soul or no soul, our own conscience de-
mands that we be just and loving and helpful to our fellow-
men. I should say to the doubter, Be guided, O my brother,
by the old, grand, simple landmarks of morality, and you
will not go for astray! "The final solution," says one, u in
which scepticism is lost, is the supremacy of the moral senti-
ment." Frederick Robertson was once reduced to the single
certainty, " It must always be right to do right," and upon
this principle he builded his new and better thought.
The next thing certain is that duty is confined to the pres-
ent moment. Wnatever our larger plans may be, our task is
not to shape the entire future. The small fraction of life
compressed into the moment that now flits past us — this is
all. The duty that this instant presents itself is the thing
to be done now. We may not be able to see beyond it. Do
it faithfully, and the way will open. Remember we do not
walk the journey of life by mighty strides, but by inches.
We do not need to settle everything at once; settle that
which concerns the work of to-day. The future can wait.
He who takes care of the present is taking best care of the
future. He who solves the problem of the moment at hand,
solves the problem of eternity! Motley says of Old John
Barne veldt, the Hollander: " He resolved to adopt a system
of ignorance upon matters beyond the flaming walls of this
world; to do the work before him manfully and faithfully,
while he walked the earth, and trust that a benevolent Cre-
ator would devote neither him nor any other man to eternal
hell-fire." The present moment is a point in a circle that
sweeps far beyond the horizon. Duty, the duty of the
moment, may seem a slender footing, but it is a solid rock —
part of the framework of the universe. An editorial in the
New York Tribune says of James Freeman Clark: —
His rule had always been to do the nearest duty with all hearti-
ness and fidelity, and that rule will carry any man far.
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30 THE ARENA.
The great things that are practical we know. Let us rest
upon them until we can go further. We have enough
knowledge coming to us from all sources to make our lives
grand, our careers sublime. We have the light bearing upon
the inner life of man that comes to us from all the prophets
and great religious teachers of the world. Above all for our
pattern — if we think of him as nothing else — there is that
marvellous life of the Nazarene that shows us how divine
humanity may become. The experience of the human race
is behind us, demonstrating that the tendency of righteous-
ness is towards power and perpetuity, while that of wicked-
ness is towards defeat and disaster. We have the light of
all the truth that has been reached by discoverers, inventors,
and men of genius and science. We have the inspiration
that comes from the world's poets, and artists, and masters of
music. We have the light of our own ideals, the vision of
what we ourselves ought to be, the hand that beckons us
from height to height. Surely there is wisdom enough.
Surely we need not make base, dishonored things of our
lives, — even if there are unsolved mysteries that encircle
us. Upon this practical basis let us strive to establish the
doubter; and whatever conclusions men may reach, let us
never forget that we still be brethren, that we are bound in
the bundle of life together. Let us say, You shall reach no
point in your doubt, O my brother, which shall alienate you
from my heart.
I shall keep my fealty good
With the human brotherhood.
We shall still hold hands. We shall still love and labor
on together, striving to lift men up, to lighten their burdens,
to draw them away from the animal to the spiritual. These
things are positive and certain. When it is necessary we will
talk over the things we do not know, in the spirit of charity.
Whatever may be beyond the dark curtain, it is well to do
justly and love mercy here. Even if there be no awakening
from the slumber that is coming, — if the eyes we close on
earth should never open in a fairer realm, — it is still better
that we now lighten the sorrows of the sad and burdened
about us, and leave our deeds as a heritage and example to
those who shall come after. If so it be that love dies in the
dust, enthrone it now! But if we awake, as we hope and
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THE LIBERAL CHURCHES AND SCEPTICISM. 31
believe, — as we cannot but hope and believe, — if life lives
on beyond, the best preparation for it is the upbuilding of
character and the cultivation of righteousness here. We can
make no mistake about it. These things alone will be
carried over. On the foundations we lay here, the eternal
structures will rise!
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WOMEN WAGE-EAMERS : THEIR PAST, THEIR
PRESENT, AND THEIR FUTURE.
BY HELEN CAMPBELL.
GENERAL CONDITIONS IN THE WESTERN STATES.
Turning now to the West, and to the reports from Kan-
sas and Wisconsin, we find a wage but slightly above that of
New Jersey, the weekly average being $5.27. Of the
50,000 women at work in 1889 — the number having now
nearly doubled — but 6,000 were engaged in manufact-
uring, the larger portion being in domestic service. Save
in one or two of the larger towns and cities, there is no
overcrowding, and few of the conditions that go with a
denser population and sharper competition. Kansas gives
large space to general conditions, and, while urging better
pay, finds that her working women are, as a whole, honest,
self-respecting, moral members of the community. Factory
workers are few in proportion to those in other occupations,
and this is true of most of the Western States, where gen-
eral industries are found rather than manufactures.
The report from Colorado for 1889 includes in its own
returns certain facts discovered on investigation in Ohio and
Indiana, and matched by some of the same nature in Colo-
rado. The methods of eastern competition had been adopted,
and Commissioner Rice reports: —
In one of the large cities of Ohio, the labor commissioners of
that state discovered that shirts were being made for 36 cents a
dozen; and that the rules of one establishment paying such wages,
employing a large number of females, required that the day's labor
should commence and terminate with prayer and thanksgiving.
In Indiana matters appear even worse. By personal inves-
tigation, it was found that the following rates of wages
were being paid in manufacturing establishments in Indian-
apolis: For making shirts, 30 to 60 cents a dozen; overalls,
32
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WOMEN WAGE-EARNEKS. 33
40 to 60 cents a dozen pairs; pants, 50 cents to $1.25 per
dozen pairs. ..." In our own state," writes the Commis-
sioner, " owing to eastern competition on the starvation wage
plan, are found women and girls working for mere subsist-
ence, though the prices paid here are a shade higher. It is
found that shirts are made at 80 cents a dozen, and summer
dresses from 25 cents upward."
Prices are higher here than at almost any other portion of
the United States, and thus the wage gives less return. In
spite of the general impression that women fare well at this
point, the report gives various details which seem to prove
abuses of many orders. It made special investigation into
the conditions of domestic service, that in hotels and large
boarding-houses being found to be full of abuses, though
conditions as a whole were favorable. In so new a state
there are few manufacturing interests, and the factories
investigated are many of them reported as showing an almost
criminal disregard of the comfort and interests of the
employees. Aside from this, the report indicates much the
same general conditions as prevail in other states.
In Minnesota, with its average wage of $6 per week, there
are few factories, manufacturing being confined to clothing,
boots and shoes, and a few other forms. Domestic service
has the largest number of women employed, and stores and
trades absorb the remainder. There is no overcrowding save
here and there in the cities, as in St. Paul or Minneapolis,
where girls often club together in rooming. While many of
the workers are Scandinavian, many are native born, and for
the latter there is often much thrift and a comfortable
standard of living. The same complaints as to lowness of
wage, resulting from much the same causes as those specified
elsewhere, are heard; and in the clothing manufacture wages
are kept at the lowest possible point. As a whole, the
returns indicate more comfort than in Colorado, but leave
full room for betterment. The chapter on " Domestic Ser-
vice " shows many strong reasons why girls prefer factory or
general work to this; and as the views of heads of employ-
ment agencies are also given, unusual opportunity is afforded
for forming just judgment in the matter.
Next on the list comes the report from California for 1887
and 1888. The resources of the bureau were so limited that
it was impossible to obtain returns for the whole state, and
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84 THE AREtfA.
the commissioner therefore limited his inquiry to a thorough
investigation of the working women of San Francisco, in
number about twenty thousand. The state has but one
cotton mill, but there are silk, jute, woollen, corset, and shirt
factories, with many minor industries. Home and general
sanitary conditions were all investigated, the bureau follow-
ing the general lines pursued by all.
Wages are considered at length; and Commissioner Tobin
states that the rate paid to women in California " does not
compare favorably with the rates paid to women in the
Eastern States, as do the wages of men, for the reason that
Chinese come more into competition with women than with
men. This is especially the case among seamstresses, and in
nearly all our factories ... in other lines of labor the wages
paid to females in this state are generally higher than
elsewhere."
Rent, food, and clothing cost more in California than in
the Eastern States. The wage tables show that the tendency
is to limit a woman's wage to a dollar a day, even in the best
paid trades, and as much below this as labor can be obtained.
In shirtmaking, Commissioner Tobin states that she is
worse off than in any of the Eastern States. Clothing of all
orders pay3 as little as possible, the best workwomen often
making not over $2.87 per week. Even at these starvation
rates, girls prefer factory work to domestic service; and as
this phase was also investigated, we have another chapter of
most valuable and suggestive information. In spite of low
wages and all the hardship resulting, working women and
girls as a whole are found to be precisely what the reports
state them to be, hard-working, honest, and moral members
of the community. General conditions are much the same as
those of Colorado, the summary for all the states from which
reports have come being that the average wage is insuf-
ficient to allow of much more than mere subsistence.
The Labor RepQrts for the State of Missouri, for 1889 and
1890, do not deal directly with the question of women wage-
earners; but indirectly much light is thrown by the investi-
gation, in that for 1889, into the cost of living and the home
conditions of many miners and workers in general trades,
while that for 1890 covers a wider field and gives, with gen-
eral conditions for all workers, detailed information as to
many frauds practised upon them. The commissioner, Lee
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WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS. 35
Merriweather, is so identified with the interests of the
worker, whether man or woman, that a formal report from
him on women wage-earners would have had especial value.
Last on the list of state reports comes an admirable one
from Michigan, prepared by Labor Commissioner Henry A.
Robinson, issued in February, 1892, which devotes nearly 200
pages to women wage-earners, and gives careful statistics
of 137 different trades and 378 occupations. Personal visits
were made to 13,436 women and girls living in the most
important manufacturing towns and cities of the state; and
the blanks, which were prepared in the light of the experi-
ence gained by the work of other bureaus, contained 129
questions, classified as follows: social, 28; industrial, 12;
hours of labor, 14; economic, 54; sanitary, 21; and seven
other questions as to dress, societies, church attendance, with
remarks and suggestions by the women workers. The result
is a very minute knowledge of general conditions, the tables
given being given in a series of tables admirably prepared.
In those on the hours of labor, it is found that domestic
service exacts the greatest number of hours; one class re-
turning fourteen hours as the rule. In this lies a hint of
the increasing objection to domestic service — longer hours
and less freedom being the chief counts against it. The
final summary gives the average wage for the state as $4.86;
the highest weekly average for women workers employed as
teachers or in public positions being $10.78.
The remarks and suggestions of the women themselves
are extraordinarily helpful. Outside the cities, organiza-
tion among them is unknown; but it is found that those
trades which are organized furnish the best paid and most
intelligent class of girls, who conceived at once the benefits
of a labor bureau, and answered fully and promptly. The
hours of work in all industries ranged from nine to ten, and
the wage paid was found to be a little more than 50 per cent
less than that of men engaged in the same work. A large
proportion supported relatives, and general conditions as to
living were of much the same order of comfort and dis-
comfort as those given in other reports. The fact that this
report is the latest on this subject, and more minute in detail
than has before been possible, makes it invaluable to the
student of social conditions; and it is entertaining reading,
even for the average reader.
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36 THE ARENA.
We come now to the final report, in some ways a
summary of all — that of the United States Labor Depart-
ment at Washington, and the work for 1889.
In the 22 cities investigated by the agents of this bureau,
the average age at which girls began work was found to be
15 years and 4 months. Charleston, S. C, gives the highest
average, it being there 18 years and 7 months, and Newark,
N. J., the lowest, 14 years and 7 months. The average
period in which all had been engaged in their present occu-
pations is shown to be 4 years and 9 months; while of the
total number interviewed, 9,540 were engaged in their first
attempt to earn a living.
As against the opinion often expressed that foreign
workers are in the majority, we find that of the whole
number given, 14,120 were native born. Of the foreign
born, Ireland is most largely represented, having 936; and
Germany comes next, with 775. In the matter of parentage,
12,907 had foreign-born mothers. The number of single
women included in the report is 15,387; 745 were married,
and 2,038 widowed, from which it is evident that, as a rule,
it is single women who are fighting the industrial fight alone.
They are not only supporting themselves, but are giving
their earnings largely to the support of others at home.
More than half — 8,754 — do this; and 9,813, besides their
occupation, help in the home housekeeping. Of the total
number, 4,928 live at home, but only 701 of them receive
aid or board from their families. The average number in
these families is 5.25, and each contains 2.48 workers.
Concerning education, church attendance, home and shop
conditions, 15,831 reported. Of these, 10,458 were educated
in American public schools, and 5,375 in other schools ;
5,854 attend Protestant churches; 7,769 the Catholic, and
367 the Hebrew. A very large percentage, comprehending
3,209, do not attend church at all.
In home conditions 12,120 report themselves as "comfort-
able," while 4,692 give home conditions as " poor." " Poor,"
to the ordinary observer, is to be interpreted as wretched,
including overcrowding, and all the numberless evils of tene-
ment-house life, which is the portion of many. A side light
is thrown on personal characteristics of the workers, in the
tables of earnings and lost time. Out of 12,822 who re-
ported, 373 earn less than $100 a year, and this class has an
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WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS. 37
average of 86.5 lost days for the year covered by the investi-
gation. With the increase of earnings, the lost time de-
creases, the 2,147 who earn from $200 to $450, losing but
37.8 ; while 398, earning from $350 to $500 a year, lost but
18.3 days.
Deliberate cruelty and injustice on the part of the em-
ployer are encountered only now and then ; but competition
forces the working in as inexpensive a manner as possible, and
thus often makes what must sum up as cruelty and injustice,
necessary to the continued existence of the employer as an
industrial factor. Home conditions are seldom beyond
tolerable, and very often intolerable. Inspection, — the effi-
ciency of which has greatly increased, — the demand by the
organized charities at all points for women inspectors, and
the gradual growth of popular interest are bringing about a
few improvements, and will bring more, but the mass every-
where are as stated. Ignorance and the vices that accom-
pany ignorance — want of thoroughness, unpunctuality, thrift-
lessness, and improvidence — are all in the count against
the lowest order of worker; but the better class, and indeed
the large proportion of the lower, are living honest, self-
respecting, infinitely dreary lives.
It is a popular belief, already referred to elsewhere, that
the working women form a large proportion of the numbers
who fill houses of prostitution; and that "night-walkers" are
made up chiefly from the same class. Nothing could be
further from the truth, the testimony of the fifteenth annual
report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor being in the
same line as that of all in which investigation of the subject
has been made, and all confirming the opinion given. The
investigation of the Massachusetts Bureau, in fourteen cities,
showed clearly that a very small proportion among working
women entered this life. The largest number classed by
occupations came from the lowest order of worker, those
employed in housework and hotels, and the next largest was
found among seamstresses, employees of shirt factories, and
cloakmakers, all of these industries in which under pay is
proverbial. The great majority, receiving not more than $5
a week, earn it by seldom less than ten hours a day of hard
labor, and not only live on the sum, but assist friends, con-
tribute to general household expenses, dress so as to appear
fairly well, and have learned every art of doing without.
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38 THE ARENA.
More than this, since the deepening interest in their lives,
and the formation of working girls' clubs and societies of
many orders, they contribute from this scanty sum enough
to rent meeting-rooms, pay for instruction in many classes,
and provide a relief fund for sick and disabled members.
This is the summary of conditions as a whole, and we pass
now to the specific evils and abuses in trades and general
industries.
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SAVE THE AMERICAN HOME.
BY I. E. DEEN.
The American Monetary Commission very truly said that
44 A shrinkage in the volume of currency has caused more
misery than war, famine, or pestilence, and more injustice
than all the bad laws ever enacted." Clay said, " Owing to
the contraction of the currency, and reduction of prices and
wages, over three fourths of the land owners of Great Britain
lost their estates, the whole number of estates in the king-
dom shrinking from 160,000 to 30,000 from 1820 to 1840."
In the United States the record from 1880 to 1900 will be
as alarming as it was in England if it continues for the next
ten years at the pace of the last ten years. According to
the census report, the tenant farmers of Kansas increased
20.12 per cent from 1880 to 1890 ; Ohio, 12.14 per cent;
while according to the same report, over two thirds of the
home users, not farmers, in the United States are living in
rented houses.
New York and the New England States will, I am afraid,
make a still worse showing ; for while the great bulk of the
wealth produced in the last ten years went to New York and
the New England States, it has not gone into the pockets
of the farmers or laborers, but has aggregated in the coffers
of the great combines and trusts.
Speaking of Massachusetts, R. P. Porter, superintendent
of census says: —
The mortgage movement of the ten years, which has been an
increasing one without interruption, began with an incurred debt of
128,176,133 in 1880, and ended with $75,626,344 in 1889, an increase
of 168.05 per cent, while the population increased but 25.57 per cent
in the same time.
Mr. Porter further says in the same bulletin, page 3: —
A debt of $50.31 rests upon every mortgaged acre, and a debt of
$2^42 on each mortgaged lot in the state.
And further: —
That the following amounts are drawing interest at the different
rates named, from 10 to 144 per cent, and secured by real-estate
mortgages.
80
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40
THE
ARENA.
At 10 percent, $71,256
At 21 per cent,
$200
" 12 " " 74,173
u 24 u u
3,325
" 12.5 " " 800
u 36 u u
2,221
" 15 " " 11,024
" 48 " "
107
" 20 '* " 850
u 62 " "
1,100
In 1882 a mortgage was cancelled of $2,500 in amount that drew
144 per cent interest; in 1885 another was cancelled drawing 81 per
cent, and in 1888 one was cancelled drawing 84 per cent interest.
It is not possible to realize what this condition and these
rates of interest mean. We need not go to Massachusetts to
find plenty of these horrible and brutal examples of " man's
inhumanity to man," for every city of 20,000 population or
more has men (God forbid the name) who are growing rich,
hardened, and heartless, charging from 2 to 10 per cent per
month for indorsing notes for small loans with collateral
security.
These inhuman vultures are the ones to tell you that there
is plenty of money in the country if you have anything to
get it with; yet one of them (while boasting that he had
entered up 692 chattel mortgages in the last four months)
told me that he never indorsed a note unless he had collateral
up which would sell for double the amount under the sheriffs
hammer.
How many people realize what compound interest means?
(These men get compound interest all the time on every-
thing, as they get their interest in advance.) The following
table shows the astonishing rapidity with which interest is
rolled up as the rate per cent is increased. . It is a matter of
which nine tenths of the industrial classes are fatally ignorant.
One dollar, 100 years at
u u u
u u u
a u u
at 1 per cent .
$2 75
7 25
" 2U
11 75
" 3
19 25
" 3>£ «
31 25
u 4 u
50 50
" 4)4 "
81 50
" 5 "
131 50
"6 "
340 00
u 7 "
868 00
" 9 "
u io «
u 12 «c
u 15 (C
u 18 # u
u 24 <«
2,203 00
5,543 00
13,809 00
84,675 00
1,174,405 00
15,145,007 00
. 2,551,799,404 00
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SAVE THE AMERICAN HOME. 41
Our Saviour, if he had lived until to-day, would be over
1,893 years old; and if he had saved one dollar for every
week day since he was found in the manger at Bethlehem,
he would only have been worth on the first of January, 1893,
the sum of $582,569; while one of the financial brigands of
our times, if he could have put one dollar at use shaving notes
at 18 per cent, one hundred years ago only, would have had
as the result the magnificent fortune of $15,145,007. Few
men realize that money accumulates 18 times as fast at 6
per cent as at 3, 316 times as fast at 8 per cent as at 2, when
compounded annually for a hundred years; yet the average
rate of interest throughout the United States is estimated at
8 per cent, and every dollar of interest paid in advance is
equivalent to compound interest.
The shrinkage of the volume of currency since 1870
throughout the civilized world, has caused more business
failures, more misery, more heartache, more suicides, more
ruined homes, and made more drunkards, than all other
causes combined.
It has filled our country with rented farms, our cities with
tramps and millionnaires, both inimical to the best interests
of the people.
The continual strain of trying to keep up under adverse
circumstances has filled our insane asylums with bankrupts,
our poor-houses with paupers, and our prisons with criminals.
Legislation for a quarter of a century has discriminated
in favor of unemployed, idle capital, and against the wealth
producer of our country.
The farmer who sold his farm 25 years ago, and buried his
money in some dark vault, and has simply worked enough to
make a bare living, can go and bring his money to the light
of day and buy three just as good farms as he sold.
I have a friend, H. L. Case of Bristol Centre, N. Y., who
bought his farm in 1872, when wheat was worth $1.80 in
the New York market. He agreed to pay $15,000 for the
105 acres; he paid only $500 down, yet figured that he could
pay for the farm and be out of debt in eight years. The
first year, after paying expenses, interest, and taxes, he was
able to pay $2,000 on the principal. The next year, 1873,
(silver was demonetized) the panic struck him before he had
sold his crops; he held them over until the spring of
1874, and when sold could only pay $500 on the principal
after paying other expenses.
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42 THE ARENA.
He has paid something every year from that time to this,
and yet finds that the value of the farm has shrunk as fast or
faster than he has reduced the amount of the mortgage, until
now the $5,000 mortgage, which still remains unpaid, covers
the entire value of the farm if sold under foreclosure to-day.
His books show that he has paid $10,000 on the principal,
and over $15,000 in interest, and yet has poorer prospect of
owning his farm than he had twenty-one years ago.
This certainly is not a case of poor farming or inattention
to business, for there is no better farmer, or one who attends
more closely to business, in the state; and he is one of those
diversified farmers so necessary to successful farming of late
years.
I have been over his farm, and through his 20-acre hop-
yard; I have been among and enjoyed some of the fruit from
his 2,000 peach trees; I have seen his 10-acre field of black-
caps loaded to the ground with their richness of choicest
fruit. In fact, H. L. Case prides himself on his average yield,
and certainly no farmer keeps his soil in better and cleaner
condition. He also has 105 swarms of honey bees, which he
watches as closely as Shylock does his mortgage, taking off all
the good honey they make and substituting melted sugar,
which they must carry into their cells and make over (nights
and mornings). This is the only real mean thing I ever
knew my friend Case to do. It is a Shylock practice.
Now let us compare these two men's condition, under the
practices of the last 25 years.
In 1872 they stood: Case, 22 years old, with $500 cash,
robust, healthy, and just married to a brave little woman,
both determined to make a mark in the world.
A neighbor, 50 years old, has 105 acres, and knows what
interest means; hence sells land to Case for $15,000. Dif-
ference between their conditions is 105 acres of land less the
$500.
How does the account stand twenty-one years later ? In
1893 I find that while Case and his family have earned and
saved, above all expenses of living and taxes, etc., and paid
to the mortgagee the sum of $24,500 — if the mortgage
should be foreclosed to-day, he would have nothing left;
while the mortgagee, who has only earned a bare living
and paid no taxes, has a mortgage calling for the original
farm of 105 acres with all its improvements, and money
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SAVE THE AMERICAN HOME. 43
enough (paid him by Case) to buy and pay for five more
just as good farms, or 525 acres more.
My friend Case, who started in life 21 years ago, with
heart light and buoyant with hope of home and wife, sur-
rounded with happy, laughing, and loving children, is almost
discouraged; wife dead, himself old beyond his years, and a
life of tenant farming, or worse, staring his children in the
face. I emphasize this instance to show the infamy of
the policy of a shrinking volume of money. Truthfully
did the United States Monetary Commission say: " A shrink-
age in the volume of currency has caused more misery than
war, famine, and pestilence, and more injustice than all the
bad laws ever enacted." The experience of my friend Case
is the sad, sad story of millions of hard-working and worthy
men in the last 25 years, who have been trying to build up
homes of their own in every part of the country.
No man has bought a home and incurred a debt who has
not been compelled to pay in money more value than he
contracted to pay. No merchant has bought without danger
of selling for less than he pays. Manufacturers have sold
their manufactured goods on a continually shrinking market,
and to protect themselves against loss have formed combines
and trusts to control prices by limiting production.
Laborers have repeatedly struck against reduction of wages,
only to be locked out and turned on the road as tramps.
Our courts are fast becoming simply annexes of great
corporations. Individual interests have no show of justice
before legislatures or courts, when in conflict with combines
or trusts.
This condition of things has attracted the attention of
some grand men of this and other countries, and has re-
sulted in developing others who are looming up in the great
field of individual effort and unselfish devotion to the
interests of humanity.
These men have called other men together for consulta-
tion; and as the result we have formed in this country great
industrial organizations, all fast agreeing on certain demands
which will result in reversing the downward tendency of
prices, and setting the wheels in motion in the other direction.
This movement has inspired the farmer with new courage
and the mechanic with renewed hope. Four millions of men
are to-day members of organizations who are demanding
some or all of the following laws : —
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44 THE ARENA.
An increase of the volume of full legal-tender money to
$50 per capita.
The unlimited free coinage of silver.
The sub-treasury and farm-loan plan.
A graduated income tax.
Postal savings banks.
Ownership of railroads, telegraphs, and telephones by
government.
The land for the people.
These men are fast getting together, and then we shall
have prosperity for the producer. Over a million voted
at the election of 1892 ^for these avowed objects ; and were
the election to be held again, to-day, four times that number
would be recorded for these principles.
An increase in the volume of money, to $50 per capita,
and the enactment of the other demands, as laws, would
safely double the prices of labor and all the products of labor.
Last fall, while delivering an address in a town in
Cattaraugus County, I made the above expression, when a
farmer in the audience took exception to the statement, and
said that if the prices of labor, and all the products of labor
advanced equally from the adoption of our demands, no one
would be benefited.
I asked him if he would object to a practical illustration
of the truth of my statement. He said, Most certainly not.
(I had already been told that there was a mortgage . of
$5,000 on his farm.) I asked him if he would tell me how
many pounds of butter, wool, cheese, and other farm prod-
ucts he had sold from his farm, and the price received for
same. I also asked him to mention in such statement the
percentage of gross products which would be required to
maintain and keep up the farm and buildings.
He stated that he had sold
6,000 pounds of butter at 20 cents per pound $1,200
30 fat calves at #G each 180
20 " pigs » 8 " 160
30 " lambs " 5 " 150
2,000 pounds of wool at 26 cents per pound 500
82,190
1,533
$657
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SAVE THE AMERICAN HOME. 45
He also said that it would require 70 per cent of gross
receipts to maintain farm and pay expenses, leaving $657 to
pay the interest and apply on the principal.
When a boy I was considered an expert in mathematics,
and I very soon figured that with $657 to pay principal
and interest it would require eleven years to pay off the
mortgage, leaving him a balance in cash of $344.90, while
in this time he would have paid the sum of $1,882.12 in
interest. (See Note A.)
Now, my friend, we will double the price of every article
sold from the farm, and double the cost of everything
bought, and you will pay off the same mortgage in five
years, and have left $716.01; and instead of paying $1,882.12
interest, you will have paid only $1,653.99. If you continue
to work and save for the full term of eleven years, and
invest your savings at the end of each year so they will earn
6 per cent, you will not only own your farm free from debt,
but will be worth $10,224 besides, which you have saved as
the result of the increase of the price of labor, and all the
products of labor. (See Note A.)
My friend Case was getting higher prices than those
recorded in the last table when he agreed to pay $15,000 for
his farm, and figured to pay off the mortgage in eight years.
But, my friend, since you can perceive that an increase in
prices all around will really help you, let me see how you
would be benefited by the adoption of the sub-treasury
plan and farm-loan bill, reducing the rate of interest to 2
per cent.
In this case you would have paid off your mortgage in
four years, have $3.64 left, and would have paid but
$252.36 in interest; and could you still have invested your
savings so as to pay you 6 per cent per annum, at the end of
the eleven years you would own your farm and be worth
811,697.87 besides. (See Note B.)
It is unnecessary to say that my Cattaraugus friend was
astonished, and at once agreed that the changes demanded
by the industrial organizations of the country should become
the law. So that my friend Case may still have a hope of
paying for the home that has already cost him so much.
How it would affect a day laborer.
A man working by the month buys a home for $1000,
and agrees that 30 per cent of his wages at the end of each
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46 THE ARENA.
year shall apply first on the payment of the interest, and
balance on the principal ; his wages being $30 per month or
$360 per annum.
Thirty per cent of $360, or $108, applied on the payment
of interest and mortgage, as per agreement, will pay off
the same in 14 years, and leave a balance of $22.63 (see
Note C), and he will have paid in interest $498.37;
while with double the wages, although his every expense
was doubled, he would own his home free from debt at
the end of 6 years and have a balance of $86.98; and if he
continues to work and save, and invests his savings at
the end of each year so they will pay him 6 per cent profit,
he will have, at the end of the 14 years that it took to pay
for his home at the old scale, his home and $2,273.84. Surely
the laborers of the country are interested in these demands.
(See Not3 C.)
But, says my banker friend, it is true that this change
would benefit those in debt, but it would rob the creditor
classes to just that extent. Supposing this statement was
true, who should have the preference in legislation — the men
who produce all the wealth of the universe, or the men who
produce all the misery, bankruptcy, poverty, and cause two
thirds of all the crime in the country ? But this position is
not true, as we demand a strictly honest money of fixed vol-
ume of $50 per capita, supplemented by the " sub-treasury
plan and farm loans," to give flexibility during the season
of the year when extra money is, required to move the crops.
Secretary Windom, in his famous speech made in New
York, Jan. 31, 1890, said: —
The ideal financial system would be one that would furnish just
enough absolutely sound currency to meet the legitimate wants of
trade, and no more, and that should have enough elasticity of volume
[flexibility] to adjust itself to the various necessities of these people.
Could such a circulating medium [flexible] be secured, the gravest
commercial disasters which threaten our future might be avoided.
These disasters have always come when unusual activity in business
has caused an abnormal demand for money, as in autumn, for the
moving of our immense crops. There will always be great danger at
those times under any cast-iron system of currency such as we now
have.
Every legitimate business is benefited by the security and
safety of every other business. In 1865 and 1866, when
this country had the largest volume of money in circulation,
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SAVE THE AMERICAN HOME. 47
and we were enjoying the highest prices ever known, and
every willing worker was fully and profitably employed, we
had but 530 business failures in 1865, and but 632 in 1866,
involving a loss of but $64,958,000; while the failures for
1890 and 1891 were 10,673 and 12,394, and involved the
enormous loss of $348,210,836. This number does not in-
clude the tens of thousands of foreclosed mortgages or
failures of farmers. Hume says : —
We find that in every kingdom, into which money begins to flow
in greater abundance than formerly, everything takes a new face;
labor and industry gain life; the merchant ^becomes more enter-
prising, the manufacturer more diligent and skilful, and even the
fanner follows his plough with greater alacrity and attention. A
nation whose money decreases is actually at that time weaker and
more miserable than another nation which possesses no more money,
but is on the increasing hand.
Falling prices and misery and destruction are inseparable com-
panions. The disasters of the Dark Ages were caused by decreasing
money and falling prices. With the increase of money, labor and
industry gain new life.
Pliny, the ancient historian, writes: —
The colossal fortunes which ruined Italy were due to the con-
centration of estates, through usury, brought about by lack of an
abundant supply of money.
During the Napoleonic wars, England issued an uncon-
vertible legal-tender paper money of $250,000,000. Sir
Archibald Allison, in u History of Europe," describing the
condition of the people, said: —
Prosperity unheard of and unparalleled pervaded every department
of the empire; the landed proprietors were in affluence; wealth to an
unheard-of extent had been created among the farmers; our revenues
were quadrupled; our colonial possessions encircled the earth. This
period terminated in a flood of glory and a blaze of prosperity, such
as had never descended upon any nation since the beginning of time.
In speaking of the discovery of gold in California and
Australia, and the effect of the increase of the money volume
of the world thereby, Hon. John P. Jones said in the United
States Senate: —
In twenty-five years after the discovery of gold in California and
Australia, the world made more advance than it had made in the
previous two hundred years.
During that time the United States nearly quintupled in
wealth, increasing from eight billions to nearly forty billions.
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48
THE ARENA.
My banker friend has not entered his protest against the
shrinkage in volume of money in the last twenty-five years,
which has tripled the value of every dollar owed ljy the
toiling millions.
The following table * shows how the increase in the value
of dollars has affected the farmer and the laborer, who must
raise products and sell to pay every expense of government,
local, state, or national, and also illustrates how salaries of
men with fixed incomes have been doubled and tripled by
the demonetization of silver and contraction of the world's
volume of money, when measured by the products named.
Products of the farm, and the amounts
that Lincoln's salary would buy. at
average New York prices from 1864
to 1868, inclusive.
9 °«
qegs .
S 2 - g
■g-s .1
£ 5 o o.s
Wheat, bushels 10,310
Corn, bushels 18,248
Tobacco, pounds 132,275
Cotton, pounds 38,051
Wool, pounds 48,356
Rice, tons 110
Butter, pounds 68,870
Sugar, raw, pounds 193,798
New Orleans molasses, gallons, 2»;,321
Hams, pounds 166,666
Mess beef, barrels 1,642
Mess pork, barrels 959
66,666
100,000
625,000
555,555
166,066
960
250,000
1,111,111
135,135
500,000
6,060
6,263
56,356
81,752
492,725
617,504
118,310
850
17t,130
917,313
109,614
333,334
4,418
4,304
$161,663 30
137,000 24
118,125 02
365,000 13
85,166 27
217,728 00
87,120 19
144,233 28
128 7'4 04
126.000 12
92,264 05
137,592 64
$2,425
1.37
.189
.657
.617
226.80
.363
.045
.946
.15
15.225
26.160
This table, if carefully studied, will demonstrate the won-
derful increase in the value of dollars, and how that increase
has affected the farmer, who must produce all these different
articles with which salaries and all other expenses are paid.
The third column shows how many more of the different
products it took to pay the president's salary last year than
it did to pay the immortal Lincoln's.
From these figures it will be seen that, had the president's
salary been paid last year in these different articles, at the
average prices in the New York market for '92, and had he
sold them at the prices which Lincoln was compelled to pay,
his salary would have amounted to, not 850,000, but, if paid
in cotton, to 1365,000.13; if paid in rice, to $217,728; if in
• By act of March 3, 1873, the president's salary was doubled in dollars (being
increased from $25,000 to $50,000 per annum) ; while by act of the same vear, demonetiz-
ing silver and contracting the volume of currency,' his salary and all fixed incomes
have been multiplied as above.
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SAVE THE AMERICAN HOME.
49
wheat, to $161,662.30; if in raw sugar, to $144,233.28; and
if paid in the much talked-of wool, it would have been the
smallest salary he could have received; in other words,
wool has depreciated less than any of the other twelve
commodities.
This alarming illustration is not only true as to the presi-
dent's salary, but holds equally true of that of every other
government official, and the payment of every debt recorded
against every home in the United States; and the time has
come when the laborers and farmers must band themselves
together to demand equal and exact justice for all before
the law.
At Price* in Statement.
NOTE A.
1st year
2d •*
3d "
4th *•
6th ••
6th M
7th ••
8th M
9th "
10th ••
11th "
Balance left
Paid In
Interest.
•300 00
278 68
256 08
231 81
206 30
179 26
160 69
120 20
89 90
63 36
17 66
$1,882 76
Paid on
Principal.
$367 00
378 42
401 12
426 19
460 70
477 76
606 41
636 81
669 01
603 14
294 44
1st year
2d "
3d "
4th »
6th "
Everything Doubled.
Paid in Paid on
Interest.
$300 00
239 16
174 67
106 31
Principal.
$1,014 00
1,074 34
1,139 33
1,207 69
664 14
Total paid
$6,000 00
344 90
6th year
7th "
8th »
9th "
10th "
11th "
$1,663 99
Interest.
$42 96
124 37
210 68
302 16
399 13
601 91
$1,681 21
$4,999 60
716 01
Savings.
$2,072 97
1,314 00
1,314 00
1,314 00
1 ,314 00
1,314 00
$8,642 97
1,581 21
Balance to credit of farmer with higher prices $10,224.18
NOTE B.
At Prices in Statement at 2 Per Cent.
1st year
2d »•
3d ••
4th "
6th "
6th ••
7th »
8th "
9th ••
10th
Balance of
Paid in
Interest.
$100 00
88 86
77 49
60 90
64 08
42 02
29 72
17 16
436
$474 69
Paid on
Principal.
$657 00
668 14
579 61
691 10
602 92
614 98
628 28
640 00
218 07
$6,000 00
434 67
Everything Doubled.
Paid in Paid on
Interest. Principal.
1st year .... $100 00 $1,214 00
2d " .... 75 92 1,238 28
3d " .... 60 96 1,263 05
4th " .... 25 69 1,284 67
$252 36
Balance end 4th year
5th year .... $79 06
6th » .... 162 64
7th " .... 251 24
8th " .... 345 15
9th " .... 454 70
10th " .... 650 22
Uth " .... 662 18
$2,495 19
$5,000 00
364
$1,317 64
1,314 00
1,314 00
1,314 00
1,314 00
1 ,314 00
1,314 00
$9/201 64
2,495 19
Savings from 4th to 11th year, as the result of increased prices and 2 per
cent loans, and advance in prices of labor and products $11,697 83
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50
THE ARENA.
1st year
2d
3d
4th
5th
6th
7th
8th
9th
10th
11th
12th
13th
14th
At 930 per Month.
Paid in
Interest.
$60 00
67 12
64 06
50 83
47 40
43 76
39 91
36 22
30 85
26 22
21 32
16 18
10 67
4 83
NOTEC.
Everything Doubled.
$498 37
Balance end of 14th year . .
Paid on
Principal.
$48 00
60 88
63 94
57 17
60 60
64 24
68 09
72 78
77 15
81 78
86 68
91 82
97 33
80 64
$1,000 00
22 63
1st year
2d "
3d "
4th "
5th "
6th "
Credit end 6th year
7th year
8th
9th
10th
11th
12th
13th
14th
Accumulated interest from 6th to 14th year $458 86
Saved in principal from 6th to 14th year
Total savings from doubling price of labor and all products
Paid in
Paid on
Interest.
Principal.
$60 00
$156 00
60 64
165 36
41 71
174 29
30 26
185 74
19 11
196 89
730
12172
$208 63
$1,000 00
. . . .
86 98
$5 21
$302 98
18 18
216 00
32 23
216 00
47 12
216 00
62 91
216 00
79 64
216 00
97 38
216 00
116 19
216 00
$1,814 98
$2,273 84
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ARSENIC VS. CHOLERA.
BY R. B. LEACH, M. D.
What is America doing this season to ward off Asiatic
cholera ?
What are we doing for our fullest protection against the
undoubted invasion of an enemy more potent, till now, than
all laws, rules, and medicaments of legislators and the
medical fraternity ? Dr. Kemster, our special medical envoy
to infected Europe, denounces their statistics as doubtful,
and us as a nation hoodwinked by too much credulity in the
possible untruth thus conveyed to the world.
Our past winters' diseases, according to older and more
tried authorities, predict a most probable epidemic of cholera
in the United States this spring, summer, and fall, and
possibly next winter, accompanied by a financial depression
such as our glorious country and people have never yet
witnessed.
Its par is not in history, and as its only precedent might
be named the Black Plague of 1662, when Charles and his
barnacles of state hung together in feast and interchange of
pleasantries, as empty of humane fellow feeling as — their
probably empty pates.
Through their neglect and criminal omission of duty to
country and citizen, the flower of many flocks joined the
great silent throng beyond ; whereas, could they have had
the encouragement from medical science held out to-day,
they would have lived despite such adversities.
What does a nation like ours, with its thinkers, reasonera,
capitalists, and legislators, mean, by sitting idly and quietly
behind a sieve, such as quarantine has always proven itself,
to date, while through The Associated Press and many medical
journals, ever since September last, have been reflected the
rays of a safe, certain, and accessible prophylactic against the
awfulest destroyer of men known to civilization? and thus
far they have not, with some few exceptions, asserted their
citizenship, and memorialized Congress, their executive, and
61
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52 THE ARENA.
his cabinet to thoroughly test in Europe, while there was yet
time, such assertions as our own United States Marine Hos-
pital surgeons at Washington last September pronounced
" incontrovertible, except by test which we will make, as soon
as we acquire material in patients or suspects."
I am not proposing a novel method of resurrecting or
embalming, but simply introducing to your notice a new
plan of life insurance, a Republican measure, so to speak, of
" Protection against foreign competition and pauper immigra-
tion " of the comma bacillus.
It were impertinent in me were I to propose a novel
method of cure in the very face of that with which we can
now cure ninety-six per cent of all cholera patients, a major-
ity of cures such as few other statistics of disease can show.
Remember ! I propose a protective measure for the welU as
different from a curative measure as is hygiene from medi-
cine, yet as allied in significance and utility.
I propose a prophylactic in the same line of thought as
Jenner and Pasteur, and pronounced incontrovertible, as
above, by many, and by Paul Gibier as "theoretically
perfect."
In this position, at this writing, stands this, the only un-
tried protective measure against cholera — a protection
against disease in all its most awful awfulness; and the
United States Senate Committee on Epidemic Diseases feels
itself powerless to prove this a quarantine against Asiatic
cholera, all the appropriations of Congress going to the more
material-looking one in force.
For what is quarantine but a forty days' detention from
our midst of supposedly infected men or merchandise from
supposedly or known infected districts ? — when arsenic to
slight physiological effect, as prescribed in my exposi, arseni-
zation, is a forty days' detention of the comma bacillus from
our smaller intestines; thus a local, personal, and multiple
quarantine of each and all, equal to Jenner's vaccine in
present protection, and Pasteur's rabies canina in its curative
properties, by its simultaneous exhibition with the advent of
the cholera microbe in the same organism.
France supports the Academy of Paris, holding high the
cross of honor to the successful scientific researcher; and
Germany has already placed Koch under royal favor such as
is not equalled outside Fatherland. And all this for his
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ARSENIC VS. CHOLERA. 53
studies, for the benefit of mankind in general; while the
discoverer of telegraphy pleaded for ten years for the official
ear of his government, that he might be assisted in the
demonstration of a great truth, and receive the acknowledg-
ment of a great discovery.
The discoverer of chloroform, for the relief of women
in travail, the soldier in the field, the civilian in his domestic
hospital, and the child in eclampsia, has never been honored
by his own government, and hardly recognized as a scientist
even worthy the poorer steel of such an adversary as one of
our average legislators.
Keeley is known by his jealous colleagues as the "fool
doctor" for his silence and acquisitiveness; but maybe, like
the king's jester, he makes it pay well to " say nothing and
saw wood," lining his capacious pockets with that metal
which, in the eyes of most, surpasses copper and zinc in the
making of that wondrous fluid which will suspend senile
decay till another day.
In the promulgation of arsenization as a prophylactic
against cholera, the writer simply stands at the door of
public opinion, asking of all no more than he will give,
that each may think for himself, and in time of danger,
which fast approaches, allow him or his local exponent to
lift that sword of Damocles, suspended as by a thread, which
grows thinner and weaker with the advent of summer, whose
heat and moisture will lay quick rot upon it, and release dis-
ease amongst us like the locust, the grasshopper, and the
sparrow, leaving to the medical men, undertakers, life insur-
ance companies, and f riepds the only occupations of the day.
What a commentary on our greatness, our fairness, and
Yankee shrewdness ! What a fool is man, essentially depend-
ent upon the machinations of his enemies and the enervation
of his friends !
Senator W. E. Chandler writes : " Senator Hale and I
have talked over your proposition for a commission to go
abroad, and there test the efficacy of your theory. We find
we can do nothing direct to aid the cause, but recommend
that you write Hon. John G. Carlisle as soon as he assumes
the duties of the office of secretary of the treasury." He
is now fully petitioned through Senator R. Q. Mills, and by
the courtesy of my personal friend, ex-Senator General S. R.
Maxey, that the originator of this theory for the protection of
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54 THE ARENA.
the lives of American citizens particularly, and the world in
general, be placed at once in the midst of infection in Europe
or Asia, that there he may fully and satisfactorily demon-
strate the belief that is in him, to wit : —
To take arsenic internally to produce slight physiological
effect, as a protection against Asiatic cholera, is but to take
it as now often prescribed in the treatment of chronic
malarial poisoning and in skin diseases oi germ origin.
By so taking arsenic, we fix the albumento such an extent
that cholera (which does the same) cannot take hold, and
thus cause, along with the loss of the salts, the cramps of the
disease.
By taking arsenic by mouth, hypodermically, or from ivory
points, and repeating as necessary to produce the prescribed
effect, we destroy the animal and vegetable germs extant, at
the time of the exhibition of the remedy, and preserve the
tissues from further and rapid carbonization in consequence
thereof ; and as it is a reconstructive as well as a tonic, we
obtain immunity from the comma bacillus as long as forty
days thereafter, 'making each person so arsenicized a non-
indected and non-infectant medium daily growing stronger.
By taking arsenic we are actually occupying the space and
place demanded by the cholera germ in which to fructify
and develop; and thus we deprive the enemy of a vantage-
ground upon which to plant its guns for cramping the
adversary.
Under physiological effect of arsenic one cannot have
cholera, because, as " No two bodies can occupy the same
space at the same time," so no two diseases, which must
actually occupy the same space and place to become disease
(that is, to demonstrate their presence, such as arsenic and
cholera), can exist in the same body at the same time. (I
defy the world to controvert this maxim.)
Capital has recognized the strength of my assertions,
which all laymen should know, and will demonstrate the
truth of the same this season, as the Lancaster County
Vaccine Farms of Marietta, Penn., write to me thus, " We
recognize sufficient honor accruing to our position, as assist-
ants in the promulgation of so valuable a remedy." And
these people will soon place before our citizens " points " of
arsenious acid (each containing one-thirtieth grain of the
acid), with full directions from me for the testing of these
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ARSENIC VS. CHOLERA. 55
assertions, which will become imperative through the exist-
ing dangers and the futile efforts of quarantine; and will
be made manifest by the demands of the people for a further
protection than a quarantine on our coast and interstate
lines, when disease is actually in our midst; else what of
those germs buried with their victims last fall in New York ?
Can we not, as a thinking nation, seeking more light, see
that light when not hid under a bushel? (Why, even a
bushel of money has not hid the light of redemption from
inebriety, from a hundred thousand diseased men of all
grades of social, educational, and financial equipoise.)
Is it to be repeated in America this and maybe next year,
that our nation will not accept that which is by divine right
our own, and protect our homes and little ones from the
ravages of the fast-approaching invader, and from our infected
neighbors, who seem separated from us only as by a back-
yard fence, with but a barbed-wire of quarantine to climb,
and possibly nothing worse than a pair of torn pants for the
trouble? Will Americans wait for disease to show itself
in all the awfulness of cholera, at their very doors, before
they are aroused to their peril, or will they not now, and
en masse, join in my petition that our executive, or his act-
ing assistant, the secretary of the treasury, place before such
palisades as quarantine, that prophylactic guard of arseniza-
tion in the immigrant, or even send into the very midst of
this destruction the originator of this protection, that his
utmost may be done to thin its ranks before it besieges our
portals.
William Henry Porter, M. D., says in Mercies' Medical
Bulletin, for January, 1893, that " The presence of these for-
eign, irritating and poisonous particles [referring to arsenic],
in small quantities, stimulates the hepatic cells to increased
secretory as well as excretory activity, without positively
damaging the protoplasmic masses ; and in this way more
nutritive pabulum is taken up into the liver cells, and a more
perfect nutritive interchange is established in the liver,
which process secondarily enhances the accumulation of tissue
throughout the whole animal economy. When this has been
accomplished, diseased processes all through the system are
in part or completely removed, and more or less of a new
normal or healthy activity is brought to all parts of the
body."
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56 THE ARENA.
In this respect, arsenic and its compounds are truly
prophylactic against cholera, they being alterative in their
action, and cholera seeking to assume exactly the space and
place thereby occupied in the demonstration of its effect.
Is it not each American's privilege, and is it not his duty as
well as pleasure, to petition those he has placed in author-
ity, for all the legitimate measures of protection, whether it
be new or old, tried or untried, whether it be against man
or disease, that thereby he may proclaim his legitimate
citizenship to our most glorious Union? and shall he not
expect and get from those authorities that which is so freely
given his neighbors in France or Germany ?
We spend immense sums yearly in testing novelties in
death dealers for our army and navy, only to learn the quick-
est and surest method of killing. Shall we not now de-
mand a small appropriation^ that a life saver may be tested
as well ?
Our foreign neighbors hoard immense sums for such a pur-
pose; yet they also demonstrate in other ways the first law
of nature, by placing the innovations of medical science in
the exact and required field for their fullest demonstration.
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DOES THE COUNTRY DEMAND FREE COINAGE
OF SILVER? WHO ARE IN FAVOR,
AND WHO OPPOSED, AND WHY?
BY A. C. FISK.
Should the United States return to free bi-metallic coin-
age? This question is of paramount importance. Its magni-
tude has been fully appreciated for the last twenty years by
one class — the rich with fixed incomes and annuities !
But they have, by one device and another, during all these
years relegated this question to the rear. The gold power
well knew, when they demonetized silver in 1873, what
would be the result, and they have, by controlling the
metropolitan press of the country, subsidizing Congress, and
nominating and electing presidents, been able to smother
this question until they have doubled the value of their
money and decreased the value of everything else one half.
At home, more than three fourths of the members of Congress
are for free coinage; but under the influence of the magic
wand of the gold despots of the world, enough of them
succeed in deceiving their constituents into the belief that
they have made an honest effort to remonetize silver.
Both the old parties are under absolute control of the gold
party. We have had in this country for twenty years three
parties — the Republican, the Democratic, and the gold party.
The gold party acts as a unit, and controls the policy of
both the other great parties. When silver was demonetized,
there were probably just two men in Congress who knew it —
John Sherman, chairman of the Finance Committee of the
Senate, and Mr. Hooper, chairman of the House Committee.
Each was appointed respectively as chairman of the Con-
ference Committee, on the bill regulating the management
of the mints. This bill was drawn by Ernest Seyd, repre-
senting the gold trust of the world. It was nearly two years
before the deception was discovered. This piece of legis-
57
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58 THE ARENA.
lation was consummated wholly in the interests of the
creditor classes.
Suppose a debt was contracted with a certain volume of
money, and then one half of that volume was stricken down,
that would double the value of the other half. That is ex-
actly what has been done in this country and in Europe.
The national debts of Europe had all been contracted in
silver, and could have been properly liquidated in silver; but
without a word of warning, every contract in Europe was vio-
lated by a closure of the mints to silver. Every commodity
decreased, and within six months prices had fallen one half ;
distress was universal; there were more than thirty-five
thousand foreclosures of mortgages in five years, and one
sixth of the people were reduced to want. The effect in this
country has been the same, but more gradual, for the reason
that this country has greater resources. Still, it has reached
a point where the resources cannot be developed except at a
loss ; therefore silver must be restored, or some other system
adopted to give the people relief, or the producers and
debtors in this country will occupy the same position as do
the slaves, peons, and ryots of the gold-standard countries
of Europe.
There has been no decline in silver, but gold has risen, so
far as it affects the value of every commodity. When silver
was demonetized, it was worth one dollar and thirty-one
cents per ounce ; wheat, one dollar and twenty-five cents per
bushel ; cotton, sixteen cents per pound, and all other com-
modities in proportion. If you will take the trouble to
compare the prices of wheat, corn, cotton, and other com-
modities, with the prices of silver for the same period, you
will find that they are in close sympathy.
The producers and debtors have discovered that wheat
cannot be produced for 60 cents per bushel, nor cotton for
7 cents per pound. Were silver restored, the 600,000,000
bushels of wheat would be worth $1.50 per bushel, instead of
60 cents, and would yield the farmer $900,000,000, instead
of $360,000,000. And the 3,500,000,000 pounds of cotton
would be worth 16 cents per pound, instead of 7 cents, and
would yield the planter $560,000,000, instead of $250,000,-
000. The decline in price on corn, oats, and other farm
products is fully $400,000,000, making a total loss to the
producers of $1,250,000,000 annually. In other words, by
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FREE COINAGE OF SILVER. 59
reason of the demonetization of silver, the farmer is unjustly
taxed, in the interest of the creditor classes, more than fifty
per cent of everything he produces. This tax was imposed
secretly and surreptitiously, by the use of foreign gold.
It seems almost beyond belief that the trusted representa-
tives of the people in Congress should conspire and con-
federate with the creditor classes to tax the farmers and
debtors of this country the entire profits of their toil. Yet
it seems to have been a preconceived plan. As early as
1862 a circular was sent out, by an agent of the bankers of
England and Germany, which stated in substance that the
great debt which would grow out of the war would be used
as a measure to control the volume of money; that to accom-
plish this, bonds would be used as a banking basis ; that
money issued directly by the government could not be con-
trolled, but that they could control the bonds, and through
them the bank issues ; that they were in favor of the
abolition of slavery, as the owning of labor carried with
it care for the laborer, while the plan they proposed was the
control of labor by controlling the money volume, thereby
controlling wages, which, in the end, would result in this
country — as it has in England, Germany, and Ireland — in
sweeping the farms and homes from the present owners, and
forcing the farmers of this country to the same condition as
those in the gold-standard countries of the Old World. The
gold trust has never yet fastened its fangs upon any country
that it has not finally enslaved the producers ; and that is the
inevitable result in this countiy, unless we get immediate
relief. The silver question must be settled now. If we are
not to have the free and unlimited coinage of silver, we
must have some other money. We can have no prosperity
on a per capita basis of two dollars, which is all that a gold
standard would give us.
Most of the legislation for the past twenty years has been
vicious class legislation. The creditor classes have had
their money doubled in value, the manufacturing interests
have been protected by an unjust tariff, while the wheat and
cotton grower and silver miner have been taxed fifty per cent
of all their earnings.
There is no other question that is so little understood.
A few members of Congress and prominent bankers in the
interests of the gold lords are constantly giving the public
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60 THE ARENA.
misleading statements, which they, and those whom they
represent, know to be untrue ; still these statements are given
the widest possible publicity, while a contradiction of them,
from a representative of the people in Congress or elsewhere,
will not receive notice in the metropolitan journals. The
false statements of the gold trust are heralded through the
Associated Press despatches, commented upon, and lauded as
" sound finance " by the great metropolitan journals of the
country. With the exception of the New York Sun, Chicago
Times, and St. Louis Republic, there are no prominent
daily journals in the country that are not owned and con-
trolled absolutely by the gold trust. This same gold power
controls the fiscal power of Germany, Austria, Great Britain,
and, in fact, all Europe. It controls the press of Europe,
and wields the sceptre, no matter who wears the crown. It
is the same power that controls the press and executive
branches of this government, and enough of the members in
Congress to prevent any legislation in the interests of the
people.
A distinguished editor, at a banquet given to the members
of the press, gave utterance to the following: —
There is no such thing in America as an independent press,
unless it is in the country towns. We are all slaves. There is not
one of you who dares express an honest opinion. I am paid a
hundred and fifty dollars per week for keeping honest opinions out of
the paper I am connected with. The man who would be foolish
enough to write an honest opinion would be on the streets hunting
for a job. The business of a New York journalist is to distort the
truth, to pervert and vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to
sell his country and his race for his daily bread. We are the tools
and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes; they pull the string,
and we dance. "We are intellectual prostitutes.
If such a thing as justice ever entered the mind of the
modern Shylock, would it not be well for him to consider
whether it would not be better to use some of the many
millions which are now expended monthly to corrupt the
metropolitan press of the country, Congress, and our chief
executives, in restoring some degree of prosperity to the
people? The bankers and creditor classes in the money
centres of the East confederated with the Shylocks across
the water to force down the price of silver, and thereby the
price of all farm products.
The interest that the East has in the matter is that it
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FREE COINAGE OF SILVER. 61
doubles the value of money, and reduces the value of what
is consumed fifty per cent. The East consumes hundreds of
millions of dollars' worth of corn, wheat, and other Western
and Southern products every year. For this unjust advan-
tage Eastern speculators are willing that the plutocracy of
the Old World shall pillage the West and South of double the
amount of gain which goes to them. If any one will take
the pains to study the bulletins which are issued by the
government, he will find that Massachusetts, New York,
Pennsylvania, or any other money loaning or manufacturing
centre, has gained in wealth the past ten years, over any
Western or Southern state, more than fifteen to one.
One of the falsehoods put out by the subsidized press and
orators in Congress, and other agents of the gold lords, is
that it is the silver miner who desires protection. The silver
miners and mine owners in this country pay an unjust tax
yearly to the government of twenty-five million dollars;
while the same law which discredits silver compels the
farmers to contribute unjustly about four hundred and fifty
million dollars to the Eastern States, and about eight hun-
dred million dollars to the gold despots of Europe.
Suppose a law had been enacted openly taxing the farmer
and cotton planter forty or fifty per cent of his products, by
means of foreign gold, the same as the present law was
enacted, in the interests of the crowned heads in Europe and
their confederates in this country. Could the tax have been
collected? And would there not have been open revolt?
And would not the tax gatherer have been driven from the
country had he attempted to enforce its collection ? And
would not Congress have been given to understand that the
law must be speedily repealed ? Undoubtedly all these things
would have happened; and yet this insidious, unseen tax is
just as effective and just ag infamous and iniquitous as though
the law had specified that one half of all their earnings
should be given to the gold lords of the Old World and
their confederates in this country. The present law is
undoubtedly unconstitutional, and would be so held could
a decision be had in the courts. There has been no man
who occupied a seat in Congress when silver was demone-
tized, except John Sherman, of the Senate, and Hooper, of
the House, who has admitted that he was aware that an act
had been passed demonetizing silver. There was no sug-
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62 THE ARENA.
gestion of anything of the kind on the face of the bill, simply
an act to regulate coinage, and the word " Silver " was
omitted from the bill. Is there any one bold enough to say
that this was not fraudulent legislation ? And fraud vitiates
everything.
It is said, in reference to the history of Florence, " The
people perished, but the brigands throve." The tax which
the farmer and cotton planter, debtor, and laborer pays ic
illegal, and those who reap the benefits know it. The law
is a crime, and those who take advantage of it are particeps
criminis. But they seek to legalize and succeed in legalizing
the robbery by having some friend act as the agent, and loan
those who have been defrauded their own money, inducing
the borrower to legalize the robbery by executing his note
and securing it by a mortgage. What would be thought by
the civilized nations of the world of any country, where a con-
dition of affairs like this should exist ? Suppose, at the close
of each year, the farmer or planter who had gathered his
crop, marketed it, and received the proceeds for it, was met,
on his return home, by a brigand who ordered him to throw
up his hands, rifled his pockets, and took from him fifty per
cent of the money thus received for a year's labor. Sup-
pose, soon after, an agent of the brigand should offer to loan
this stolen money to him who had been defrauded, exacting of
him a note and mortgage, requiring ten per cent interest and
ten per cent commission for making the loan. The necessi
ties of the victims compel them to accept the offer, and in this
way the farms and homes of the producers of wealth are swept
from them, a moneyed aristocracy built up, and the producers:
reduced to practical slavery. A country that would recog-
nize such a system would expect and deserve to be con-
demned by the civilized world. Who can truthfully say
that the United States has net inaugurated substantially
such a system ?
But we are reminded that much of this money belongs
to widows and estates. I answer that it was accumulated
unjustly by reason of an increase in the purchasing power
of money, and also by reason of purchasing the products
of this country at one half their value. There is no equity
in the present system, and the people should demand some
legislation that would adjust the grievances of the debtors.
The march of evictions has begun. Forty thousand
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FBEE COINAGE OF SILVEB. 63
Western and Southern homes were foreclosed in 1892, and
the number is being greatly augmented. The people who
pioneered this Western country, made the desert blossom
as the rose, produced the wealth that paid the debts of this
country, built up an aristocracy in the East, and enriched
the plutocracy of the Old World, are now told to move on,
and find another Columbus to discover for them a new world,
unless they choose to remain as slaves of the brigands.
Is it not possible for the people of this country to learn a
lesson from the " Unspeakable Turk " ? Twelve years ago,
in consequence of successive failures in the olive crop and a
fall in the price of oil, great distress prevailed in Crete.
While the cultivators were unable to pay their interest in-
stalments to the money lenders, according to the law of the
Moslem power the debtors might not be evicted; only their
chattels could be seized and sold. Matters as between
debtor and creditor being thus at a deadlock, and cultivation
arrested, the Porte intervened by compromise between the
two parties. The interest payments for many years had
been made, not in cash, but in products, and the Imperial
Edict required that the money lenders' accounts should be
audited, and that the produce payments, having been reck-
oned at the prices ruling at the time the money was bor-
rowed, were to be deducted from the principal sum, interest
at a statutory rate only being allowed. In the general ac-
counting that took place, more than one half of the insolvents
were found to be free from debt.
What position would the farmers and cotton planters of
the West and the South be in, if a demand for an accounting
were made — such as was that of Crete — on the ground
that by the crime of 1873 money was advanced in value; and
by reason thereof, wheat, cotton, and all products were de-
creased in value to such an extent that all their mortgages,
both interest and principal, would be wiped out? Congress
undoubtedly has the power to give some such relief; but as
that body has been under the control of the gold trust for
twenty years, there does not seem to be much hope from it;
therefore would it not be wise for the producing sections,
which have so long been pillaged and robbed, to consider
whether it would not be just for the states themselves to
remedy this evil so far as possible ? The state legislatures
would certainly have the power to pass a stay law, prohibit-
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64 THE ARENA.
ing the collection of either interest or principal, until the
brigands would consent to the restoration of the money of
the people.
Rothschild stated at the recent Brussels conference: —
If this conference were to break up without arriving at any
definite result, there would be a depreciation in the value of silver
which would be frightful to contemplate, and out of which a mone-
tary panic would ensue with far-spreading effects of which it would
be impossible to foretell.
Mr. Allard, in his address before the conference, stated : —
England is the creditor nation of the world; and if the whole
world pays her in gold, it is none the less true that there are many
nations which do not pay her at all. Is it no longer true that the
worth of a debtor consists in his power of paying ? Is it not the true
interest of a creditor so to arrange matters that his debtor shall be
able to pay, rather than drive him into a corner, and make him
insolvent, as so many nations have already become ?
Why should this country borrow money from England?
We are at present in the same condition towards England
that Ireland is. All the earnings, not only of the people of
Ireland but of this country, go to England and never re-
turn. The more our debt is held in England, the better
for England and the worse for us. This country has seventy-
five billion dollars of wealth, with five hundred million dol-
lars of gold and six hundred million dollars of silver, while
England has less than four hundred million dollars of both.
When we borrow, we do not get gold, but they manage to
have their payments made in gold, which, under the present
system, is constantly increasing in value. In England, as
in this country, the single standard benefits only the creditor
classes, and the cry for free coinage that comes up from the
manufacturers and farmers in that country is almost as great
as it is from the fanners and debtors of this country. The
manufacturers of this country have not yet learned that free
coinage would benefit them. Up to this time they have been
content to become members of a ring to influence Congress
to give them special legislation which protects their manu-
factured article and furnishes them with Western bread-
stuffs at one half their value.
During a recent debate in Parliament, some of the
strongest pleas that have yet been made anywhere for the
white metal were presented, and the question before Parlia-
ment would have been adopted were it not for the personal
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FREE COINAGE OP SILVER. 65
influence which Gladstone exerted to its fullest over the
Irish members, who, desiring to retain Gladstone's interest
in the home rule for Ireland, voted to forge still further the
chains of slavery on the limbs of their constituents. Glad-
stone's speech struck the key-note of the situation when he
said: —
But if there are these two billion pounds of money which we
have got abroad, it is a very serious matter as between this country
and other countries. We have nothing to pay to them. We are not
their debtors. We should get no comfort, no consolation, out of the
substitution of a cheaper money which we could obtain for less, and
part with for more. We should get no consolation, but the consola-
tion throughout the world would be great. This splendid spirit of
philanthropy, which we cannot too highly praise, because I have no
doubt all this is foreseen, would result in our making a present of fifty
or one hundred million pounds to the world. It would be thankfully
accepted, but I think that the gratitude for your benevolence would
be mixed with grave misgivings as to your wisdom.
The Monetary Conference of 1878 declared: "It is nec-
essary to maintain in the world the monetary functions of
silver as well as those of gold." The years that have since
passed have fully emphasized the truth of this statement.
When silver was demonetized in 1873, India received an
increased flow, and the prosperity which formerly pervaded
this country was transferred to the fields and factories of
India. Prior to that time, India was not a factor in the
wheat or cotton trade; but the decline in silver was the de-
cline of all prices in the United States, and with it all farm
prosperity, and the rise of the wheat, cotton, and corn indus-
tries in India.
Had not silver been demonetized, Europe would now be
purchasing our farm products direct instead of buying our
silver at its bullion value and buying these products from
India at its money value. In 1873 India exported very
little cotton, wheat, or manufactured articles, but that coun-
try now supplies more than one hundred million dollars'
worth of cotton annually, nearly the same amount in wheat,
and her exports of manufactured articles are seventy-five mil-
lion dollars. The breadstuffs exported from the United States
in 1892 amounted to one hundred and twenty-eight million
dollars. Were it not for the depreciation in silver, the same
amount would have yielded nearly two hundred million dol-
lars. This is also true as to cotton and other products. Not
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66 tHE ARENA.
only has the price been reduced, but the quantity, and had
silver not been debased, Europe would have been compelled
to purchase farm products of us in sufficient amounts to
more than pay all our debts. This is just what they are
trying to prevent.
The metropolitan journals of the East are teeming with
interviews from bankers and other representatives of the
gold trust. Their utterances are insincere, and are simply
those of European bankers, given out through their agents in
this country, and published in their journals.
George G. Williams, president of the Chemical National
Bank, recently stated in the columns of the New York
World: —
The Sherman act should be repealed or modified so there would
be no question of the ability of the government to maintain the
parity of silver and gold. The great trouble with the government is
a lack of a sufficient reserve fund. If they had two hundred million
dollars reserve instead of one hundred million dollars, nothing would
be heard of this problem.
We should suppose that a man of Mr. Williams' position
would be above such demagogy. Any one who will reflect
a moment will see that the repeal of the Sherman law
would still further reduce the volume of money in this coun-
try, cripple every industry, and unsettle every value, even
that of the silver certificates. The hoarding of two hundred
million dollars in the treasury would put just that much more
out of circulation, and make money scarcer to that extent.
This is what the European bankers desire, but it is not what
the producers and debtors of this country wish for.
What we want is higher prices for our farm products. It
would give us as much of both gold and silver as we would
require were the farm products in this country increased, as
they would be with free coinage, from one billion to one and
a half billions of dollars, and it would be very difficult for
the European financiers to get gold enough to leave this
country with which to buy these products. Our concern
would not then be that gold would leave the country, but it
would be to find a way for it to go.
The free coinage of silver at the ratio of sixteen to one
in this country would put silver above par, and therefore our
silver would probably go abroad; but no coined silver would
come to this country for recoinage. The ratio in Europe is
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FBEE COINAGE OF SILVER. 67
fifteen and one-half ; India, fifteen. Europe has one billion
one hundred million dollars coined silver, which if recoined
at our ratio would show a loss of thirty-three million dollars.
India has nine hundred million dollars coined silver. Her
loss would be sixty million dollars were she to recoin at our
ratio. Much of the uncoined silver of the world undoubt-
edly would come to this country for coinage were we to
throw open our mints to free coinage of silver ; yet that is
exactly what the country needs. The silver product of the
world, were it all dumped into the United States, would not
give us a sufficient per capita for the increase of our popula-
tion and the demands for our trade expansion. We should
be the gainers by every dollar that did come.
The Mexican dollar is worth only its bullion value; and, in
fact, the silver dollar of Central America is received in Eng-
land, France, and Germany for about eighty cents. This is
done to secure the trade of those countries. Suppose we
were to open our mints to free coinage, the silver from those
countries would undoubtedly come to the United States ; and
the stamp of this government, with the taxing power of
sixty-five million people, would make three hundred and
seventy-one grains of pure silver a dollar, that would pass
anywhere in the world for one hundred cents; and with that
money the United States could secure the trade of all those
countries. That fact alone would force all Europe to adopt
free bi-metallic coinage, or lose a large amount of the trade
it now enjoys.
When Germany, elated by her victory over France, in
order to further cripple her fallen foe, from whom she had
exacted one billion in gold, demonetized silver, she inflicted
upon her people, by the fall of prices consequent on the
increase in the value of money, more misery than all her
armies had inflicted on France. France, on the contrary, by
giving a sufficient volume of money in circulation to main-
tain prices, emerged in a few years from the greatest disaster
in her history, conscious of a greater triumph than Germany
had achieved in war. The ransom exacted of France was
received back by her, almost as soon as paid, in exchange for
the products of her industry.
There are those who affect to believe that a parity could
not be maintained were silver restored to its immemorial use.
What gives an ounce of gold the value of twenty dollars, or
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68 THE ARENA.
three hundred and seventy-one grains of pure silver the value
of one dollar, and what keeps at par the five hundred million
dollars of uncovered notes ? It is the stamp of this govern-
ment, its farms, lands, mines, and the taxing power of sixty-
five millions of people. Did not France maintain a parity
from 1803 to 1873 with a population ranging at less than
one half of the population of the United States ? And dur-
ing this period the fluctuation between the product of the
two metals had perhaps a wider range than will be known
again in a hundred years. From 1803 to 1820 the produc-
tion was four of silver to one of gold ; from 1821 to 1840,
two of silver to one of gold ; from 1841 to 1850, about
equal; from 1851 to 1860, four of gold to one of silver;
from 1861 to 1865, three of gold to one of silver ; from 1866
to 1870, two of gold to one of silver. During all this time
France maintained by statute a ratio of fifteen and one half
to one, not for that country alone, but for the whole world.
If that period does not offer sufficient proof of the power of
law under varying conditions of supply, and tie the metals
together, and keep them so, then what proof will be required ?
Were silver restored in this country to its full use as
money, the farmers and wage-earners would have at least one
billion two hundred and fifty million dollars more money
from the increase of the products of their labor to spend than
they now have. The farmer is now restricted to absolute
necessities. If the value of his crops were doubled, he would
spend more than twice as much as he now does. This vast
sum, augmented by the entire trade which would certainly
come here from Mexico, South America, and Central America,
by reason of the fact that three hundred and seventy-one grains
of their silver would purchase in this country one hundred
cents' worth of goods, while in any gold-standard country it
would only purchase its bullion value — these vast sums of
money would stimulate trade in every part of the United
States; besides, it would develop our farms, lands, mines,
mills, and factories. Our wholesale merchants are con-
stantly restricting their trade for the reason that the country
merchants can no longer depend on the trade of the farming
sections. But with the price of crops increased, and the
money that would flow in from our sister republics to the
South, every branch of industry in this country would thrive,
and merchants could then extend "credit with some certainty
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FBEE COINAGE OF SILVER. 69
that the payments would be promptly met. Farm products
are about the only thing in this country with which to pay
debts ; and with the profits of farming extinguished, every
industry and trade must languish.
The United States need have no concern whether the other
countries adopt free coinage or not; but were silver restored
in this country, Europe would be compelled to do likewise,
or lose much of the trade she now enjoys. As a temporary
measure, until Congress adopts a free-coinage law, if the
secretary of the Treasury would open the mints to their full
capacity, coin and pay out silver to redeem the certificates,
as contemplated by law, that would greatly relieve the pres-
ent money market. Of course no real relief can be had
without free coinage.
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FREEDOM IN DRESS FOR WOMAN.
BY FRANCES E. RUSSELL.
Many a good thing "cometh without observation." If
there is " no money in it," — as there is in advertising, — no
fair chance for ridicule, no opportunity to " scoop " one an-
other, the newspapers mercifully let it alone. So a work
which looks toward the self-release of women from the op-
pression of fashion has been allowed to proceed with quiet
dignity till within sight of a reasonable degree of success.
Fashion, blinded by that madness which precedes destruc-
tion, has unwittingly helped our cause by her insane effort
to put women into hoop-skirts.
Great indignation is expressed over the threatened abomi-
nation, but it will avail little, nor can new laws upon our
statute-books prevail against "the fashion." Some suggest
that the " Committee on Dress" of the National Council of
Women do a sufficiently good work by preventing any con-
siderable number of women from putting on hoops. Only a
short time ago we were advised to concentrate our efforts to
induce women not to wear trained gowns in the street, and
there w r as talk of petitioning for a prohibitory law against
them. We might go on protesting forever, so far as fashion
is concerned; if it is not one monstrosity it is another with
which women are disfigured.
Men who admire women more than clothes have never
taken kindly to dehumanizing fashions, like high-humped
sleeves, bustles, and hoops, though admiring trains under
some circumstances. But however they may protest, as one
deformity threatens to succeed another, anything that women
will persistently wear as "the correct thing" soon comes to
be so associated with womanhood in men's minds as to seem
the "womanly" dress. A philosopher in most matters feels
troubled if his wife or daughter mingles with other women,
the only one without a bustle.
Most men have now been brought, by the most persistent
of all deforming fashions, to actually admire the false lines
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FREEDOM IN DRESS FOR WOMEN. 71
of the corset-made figure ; to consider " womanly " the deep
hollows with their corresponding protuberances, over which
the fashionable ladies' tailors and dressmakers shape their
combinations of costly fabrics. If men would legislate
against any criminality in dress, they should begin with the
corset, upon which hang, quite literally, all the follies in
skirts which they oppose.
But it would be of little use so long as the ideal of a taper
waist is retained. I never saw a corset till I was twenty
years old — never heard of one except as belonging to the
barbarisms of the past ; but the first dress I made for myself,
at the age of sixteen, was so tight (like the gowns of the
belles I admired) that it was pain to wear it. When I ran
out to meet my father, a physician, his admiring look as he
exclaimed, " What a little tiling you are ! You are nothing
but a spirit ! " was sufficient recompense for all I suffered.
Yet he would have opposed " tight lacing " — so easily are
men deceived!
Bless the hoop-skirt! — the hideous thing! It comes in
so opportunely now to point a moral. Women have said,
and men have believed, that hoops never could be fashion-
able again; meaning, of course, the all-around, pyramidal
hoops worn in the fifties and sixties ; for during much of
the time since that era, women's forms have been built out
behind with more or less steel spring and whalebone scaffold-
ing, to support their extravagant use of skirt drapery.
Yesterday I looked through two large volumes of fashion
history. One, written just previous to the last hoop-skirt era,
pitilessly exposed the absurdity of the immense hooped pan-
niers of the time of George III. and spoke of hoops as "ban-
ished forever." But they came back again in later years, and
the lovely Empress Eugenie wore them, and the Queen of
England found them so comfortable that she does not object to
their reappearance. The other volume, written a quarter of
a centuiy later, seemed to regard with artistic triumph the
closely sheathing gowns (in some of which women could neither
dance nor sit down), and the sleeves worn so tight that some-
times the wearers could not lift their hands to the tops of
their heads. The author complacently remarked, " No one
can now recall the gowns with leg-of-mutton sleeves with-
out laughing."
The next turn of the whirligig of fashion showed women
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72 THE ARENA.
with hoop-skirts strapped on their backs, instead of encircling
the body ; the straps around the legs, which secured the rear
scaffolding in place, acting as hindrances to locomotion.
Who laughs at the leg-of-mutton sleeves now ? It is inter-
esting to see how, like Kilkenny cats, the dogmas of fashion
devour one another. Only the young and inexperienced
regard the latest dictum as an absolute law of taste. One
who has completed the circle a few times has learned to
accept each inevitable change with discreet silence.
Legislation against hoop-skirts is well meant, no doubt ;
but, gentlemen, truth obliges me to say that this thing which
you abominate, and with c^ood cause, is the only one of the
nuisances and monstrosities which are intermittently imposed
upon women — by that same power which makes you discon-
tented with a wide hat band when other men wear narrow
ones — the hoop-skirt is the only one of these uglinesses
which brings some actual relief from the fetters with which
woman is bound. For this reason hoops remained a part of
the dress of the " sensible woman " (who differs from the
prevailing fashion just enough to seem " dowdy," and to
distress her young relatives) long after they had gone out of
fashion.
In the fifties hoop-skirts came to lighten the load of petti-
coats worn by women. Now they come to loosen the cling-
ing skirts — in both cases to increase woman's freedom of
locomotion. Men paid little attention, as skirts increased in
amplitude more than forty years ago, and women accepted
the increasing load of petticoats with meekness. A gray-
haired man tells me it was no uncommon sight then, in
Pittsburg streets, to see colored women and boys carry-
ing to their customers freshly laundered, starched skirts,
piled high without folding, on their outstretched arms.
Women wore from four to ten of these skirts at one time, in
order to attain proper " womanly " amplitude of figure.
Dickens must have had this style of dress in his mind's eye
when he wrote that " Mr. Merdle took down to dinner a
countess, who was secluded somewhere in the core of an
immense dress, to which she was in the proportion of the
heart to an overgrown cabbage." But Mrs. Browning prob-
ably thought of hoops when she made Romney Leigh speak
of leaving Aurora " room to sweep " her " ample skirts of
womanhood."
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FREEDOM IN DRESS FOJt WOMEN. 73
There was need of room. Those distended hoops were
known to sweep over a stand of valuable plants, to sweep
men into the gutters if two women walked abreast, to sweep
a little child off from a pier into the ocean at a fashionable
watering-place. Oh, yes ! They swept, though they had no
trains, long after they ceased to be " new brooms."
And men came to admire them ! to regard them as an es-
sential part of dressed-up women — as trains were regarded a
dozen years later. Men would have been ashamed of their
wives and daughters without them. A woman accidentally
caught without hoops modestly slunk out of sight till her
4 * womanly " appearance was restored. Yet they were ac-
knowledged to be ridiculous, and were constantly ridiculed.
A woman in the village where I was at school, had her skele-
ton skirt suddenly inverted over her head in the street on a
windy day ; and I see yet in memory, as I saw in reality,
twenty-five years ago, the neat, embroidered underclothing
to the waist of a well-known and well-dressed woman, as
she stepped into a buggy from our doorstep and turned to
arrange her parcels, so that her skirt was tilted without her
knowledge. About the same time I received a letter from a
young lady who had been an invalid for years, and who was
trying to economize her returning strength. She wrote in
praise of the skeleton skirt which lightened her burdens, as
she wore only her lined dress skirt over the lightest of skele-
tons, and dressed herself underneath warm or cool, according
to the weather. Men begged women to wear smaller skele-
tons, but these tripped us up. The smallest ones would not
allow us to step across a gutter, and they stuck out painfully
in front when sitting. This was the paradox of their day —
that to be modest and beautiful, woman must wear long
skirts ; but to walk comfortably and not reveal her shape, she
must wear ugly and immodest hoops.
At the present stage of human progress, Ward McAllister
has spoken. It is his opinion that women should adopt
hoops for the sake of modesty ! — to conceal the fact of biped-
ity. He speaks as the self-elected and not-repudiated high
priest of " society," as he has found it, — such society as
Adam Badeau doubtless had in mind when he wrote in a
newspaper-syndicate article, a few years ago, that however
intelligent and pleasant women may be, unless they wear low-
necked dresses " it is not society."
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74 THE AKENA.
Our fashions, "and the manners that go with the fashions "
(to quote from a late fashion article), come from Paris, as
every one knows. Can any woman — or any man either —
give a good reason why American women, the descendants of
those who refused to submit to foreign dictation in govern-
ment, should submit to the dictates of Frenchmen in dress? —
why the daughters of Puritan ancestors should imitate the
example and cultivate the arts of the fashionable courtesan
class in the wicked city of Paris ?
A quarter of a century ago, M. Dupin, a member of the
French Senate, in a speech before that body, told his com-
peers, who acknowledged his truth with murmurs of assent
on all sides, that the fashions in France were led by a
class of women who could not be admitted into good society
in any country, — " women whose sole and only hold on life
is personal attractiveness, and with whom to keep this up at
any cost is a desperate necessity." Mrs. Harriet Beecher
Stowe, reporting and commenting upon this in the Atlantic
Monthly, continued : —
No moral quality, no association of purity, truth, modesty, self-
denial, or family love comes in to hallow the atmosphere about them,
and create a sphere of loveliness which brightens, as mere physical
beauty fades. The ravages of time and dissipation must be made up
by an unceasing study of the arts of the toilet. Artists of all sorts,
moving in their train, rack all the stores of ancient and modern art
for the picturesque, the dazzling, the grotesque ; and so, lest these
Circes of society should carry all before them, and enchant every
husband, brother, and lover, the staid and lawful Penelopes leave the
hearth and home to follow in their triumphal march, and imitate
their arts.
Though in a quarter of a century times have changed
somewhat, though Worth and Doucet have come to be re-
garded as the arbiters of fashion, it is easy to guess who are
their principal, most paying patrons in a country like France
and a city like Paris. A widely published fashion letter
from Paris, under date of Jan. 15, 1893, begins thus : —
In Paris women of the highest social position are simple and plain
in their street dress. Curious novelties and the sensational they
leave to those who have no claim to notice except through dress.
Yet it is probable that the woman who wrote that para-
graph cannot send from Paris anything for which our news-
papers will pay so freely as for descriptions and pictures of
the "curious novelties and sensational" styles, worn by
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FREEDOM IN DRESS FOR WOMEN. ' 75
" those who have no claim to notice except through dress."
Thus is the public taste in America constantly corrupted by
placing before it pictures of deformed bodies, dressed in
senseless costumes.
A few men in Paris, powerfully aided by our newspapers,
may almost be said to hold in their hands the destiny of this
republic. Not only do they largely determine the prosperity
of various industries and commercial enterprises (and they
may believe who can, that these affluent Parisian managers
are wholly disinterested artists in dress), but their influence
affects seriously the health and character of our whole nation.
Not a citizen of this republic is born whose physical con-
stitution and cast of mind do not bear the impression of his
mothers previous health and character. *
If you do not know that fashions of dress affect both
physical and mental health, imagine the situation reversed
for a single generation — the girls brought up with the bod-
ily freedom of boys, and the boys dressed from infancy in
girls' clothing; their bodies formed to an unnatural shape,
and their minds imbued with the doctrine that beauty of
appearance should be the chief aim of life. Let the little
boy's hair grow long, and do it up in curl papers or hard
braids every night so that, night or day, he cannot have one
moment of unconsciousness of the importance of artificial
appearances. Budget his legs with skirts so that he can
have no freedom in running or climbing, and must kick out
ungracefully, sideways, to get his feet around his skirts if
he tries to go upstairs with his hands full. His form can be
trained to "graceful lines" of hour-glass shape if you begin
tight lacing early enough so that the floating ribs can be
gradually brought together, if not overlapped. Long skirts
worn on all occasions would restrict his exercise and tax his
strength and mental capacity. Would not all this affect the
boy's health both physically and mentally? Not a father
would consent to see his boy's future imperilled by such
clothing. In some heathen countries they kill the girl
babies. In America they put them through French fashions.
What will American women do about this ? More than a
thousand excellent women — authors, artists, philanthropists,
journalists, physicians, and college teachers and students
have consented, over their signatures, with many cheering
words and wishes, to give their " influence in favor of an ini
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76 THE ARENA.
provement in woman's dress which will give her the free use
of the organs of her body when working or taking exercise."
Many of the names signed to this paper were published in
The Arena for October, 1892. As a specimen score of
those since signed, we give the following : Josephine Shaw
Lovell, Susan N. Carter, Rev. Anna Shaw, " Sophie May,"
"Jennie June," Emily Huntington Miller, Harriet Prescott
Spofford, Hester Poole, E. Louise Demorest, Marietta Holley,
Mary E. Wilkins, Candace Wheeler, Jeannette Gilder, Mary
Mapes Dodge, Frances M. Steele, Helen Gilbert Ecob, Ellen
Battelle Dietrick, Sarah B. Cooper, Mary Wood Allen,
M. D., Jennie M. Lozier, M. D.
This enrolment has been made under the auspices of the
National Council of Women, by whom the Symposium on
Dress was presented in The Arena. The council has since
unanimously adopted the report of its "committee on dress"
as to an every-day business dress for women. The report is
brief, and deals only with essentials, giving three styles of
dress to serve simply as a basis, from which individual taste
is expected to vary according to circumstances. These are
the Syrian, the gymnasium suit, and the American costume.
Exact patterns are not necessary. The Syrian has a divided
skirt, gathered around each leg, and allowed to bag over.
The English divide the skirt just above the knees, and insert
a narrow gore in the inside seam of each division, the wide
ends of the gores uppermost, and joined together. Butter-
ick's pattern for the divided part of the gymnasium suit is
quite as good, if not better. These trousers, made much
narrower than the pattern, with extra high shoes, are suit-
able to wear with the American costume, instead of the but-
toned leggins like the dress. Any pretty gown pattern
shortened will do for this — especially a princess, or a short
skirt, a shirt-waist, and a removable jacket.
In adopting the report of its committee on dress, the
National Council recommends women to avail themselves of
the comfort of one of these styles of dress (modified accord-
ing to individual judgment) when visiting the World's Fair.
Surely it is an occasion when a short, loose, light " walking
dress " will be needed, as it is estimated that to walk through
all the aisles of the many buildings, without stopping to look
at anything, would require seven days, walking twenty miles
a day. Probably no one has counted all the outside steps
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FREEDOM IN DRESS FOR WOMEN. 77
and inside stairs of the many buildings, and no one can in-
form us how often or how urgently a " rainy-day dress " may
be needed.
A distinct feature of this movement is concerted action.
No one has been asked to come out alone in a reformed dress,
for it is understood that oddity is often a greater tax upon
the nerves than can be counterbalanced by muscular freedom.
A woman who has been trying to wear a dress six inches
from the ground during the past winter, writes me that it is
almost more than she can bear — the expression of women's
faces, as though they are thinking, u I wouldn't do that for
anything ! " It would be far easier for her to wear the skirt
to her knees with the majority of women dressed the same,
than to be alone in a gown six inches from the floor. It is
all a matter of custom, and it can only be changed by the
united efforts of those who see the necessity.
To take the practical step requires courage. Nearly every
woman of the thoughtful, intelligent class enrolled in favor
of the movement, would prefer to wait until the new dress
becomes common before adopting it. Well, it will be fashion-
able at the Columbian meeting, when dress is the especial
subject. Fortunately, this meeting is near the very begin-
ning of the season, and may be regarded as our formal open-
ing. Women are planning to wear it at summer resorts and
in colleges. The chivalry and intelligent patriotism of men
will then be put to the test. Will they approve and encour-
age the heroic effort of American women to achieve their own
freedom, and to make better conditions for the generations
yet to come ?
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UNION FOR PRACTICAL PROGRESS.
B. O. FLOWER.
Experience has proved to me that the relation of an editor to
his great family of readers is very similar to that of a clergyman
to his congregation. I think it would be no exaggeration to say
that during the past three years I have received over a thousand
letters from readers of The Arena asking for personal advice,
suggestions, and counsel upon points which vitally concerned their
individual well being. That which impressed me most in this cor-
respondence was the heart hunger for nobler attainments evinced
by hundreds of young men and women throughout the land,
especially in villages, towns, and small cities, and the inestima-
ble waste to humanity of vital and uplifting energy through a
lack of concerted action. From hundreds of different channels
have come voices of love, the outgushing of souls swelling with
a holy enthusiasm for justice, liberty, and fraternity ; men and
women who long to help onward the altruistic current of the
hour, but who are chafing under limitations, or who find their
work resulting in little because they are not seconded by others
in their efforts. Within and without the church, in every town
in this land, aic many refined and highly spiritual souls who yearn
to assist the suffering and further human happiness ; who long
to develop their own characters, and to come into a broader
expanse of truth than that afforded by the little world which has
heretofore encompassed them. Perhaps this thought may be
made somewhat plainer by giving the substance of some typical
letters which I have received lately. One young lady writes : —
I am a member of church, but my heart often aches when I see
the zeal which characterizes the warfare waged by many of our members
against the other churches, especially during revival meetings, when each
church seeks to proselyte from those considered heretical. Indeed [she
continues] the clanging of the church bells jangles defiantly, and is to me
harsh and unmelodious, speaking as they do of sect and schism. Now,
what I want to say is, can you not suggest some way in which all who so
love one another that they are instinctively drawn to the succor of the
weak, the unfortunate, and the suffering, may unite, regardless of creed,
in a harmonious band, to lessen want, misery, and suffering?
Another friend writes in substance as follows : —
There are several persons in our town who ought to be brought
together; who ought to have the ethical and spiritual, as well as the
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UNION FOR PRACTICAL PROGRESS. 79
intellectual, side of their nature developed; who ought to be given hints
which would lead them to think broadly; something which would take
hold of life more than a literary club or society, and yet which would
repress instead of foster a spirit of intolerance, bigotry, or hate.
In another letter, a correspondent observes that he " is appalled
at the waste of resources in our great cities due to a division of
forces, and a lack of a broad, comprehensive system which looks
beyond a mouthful of bread for the hour." These are in sub-
stance extracts from typical letters which express a civilization-
wide heart hunger. It is the story of the prodigal son coming to
himself. The husks of abstract theory, of creedal theology and
dogmatic faith, do not satisfy the iinest natures within and
without the church, especially while these sensitive souls behold
the waves of want, vice, and misery rising higher and higher.
These letters are by no means the only voices which speak of
the ethical and spiritual unrest of the hour. On every hand are
signs of the early approach of a new movement, which I believe
will ultimately become world-wide. Permit me to note some
typical illustrations.
About a year ago a very significant event took place within the
ranks of orthodox Christianity, and, while incurring hostility
from creed-bound and dogma-darkened souls, has secured the
support of many leaders among the evangelical thinkers of
America. I refer to the organization by Mr. T. F. Seward of the
Brotherhood of Christian Unity.* The members of this associa-
tion adopt the following pledge as a basis for united action : —
I hereby agree to accept the creed promulgated by the founder of
Christianity — love to God and love to man — as the rule of my life. I
also agree to recognize as fellow-Christians and members of the Brother-
hood of Christian Unity all who accept this creed and Jesus Christ as
their leader.
I join this brotherhood with the hope that such a voluntary associa-
tion and fellowship with Christians of every faith will deepen my spirit-
ual life and bring me into more helpful relations with my fellow-men.
Promising to accept Jesus Christ as my leader means that I intend to
study his character with a desire to bo imbued with his spirit, to imitate
his example, and to be guided by his precepts.
The name of this association is, I think, unfortunate, as it
appeals to class prejudice where it should be world-embracing.
To me it suggests the ancient Jewish exclusive spirit rather
than the high altruistic impulses of our time. Nevertheless,
this movement, coming from the ranks of orthodoxy, is a splen-
did step in the right direction, and affords an additional illustra-
tion of the demand, on the part of the thinking millions, for a life
made luminous by love, for a religion of deeds in place of per-
functory professions of creed or the zealous defence of theologi-
cal dogmas.
• A description of this organization was given by Mr. Seward in Arena, May, 1893.
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80 THE ARENA.
Another fact worthy of our attention, in this connection, is the
recent formation, by clergymen of ability, of independent congre-
gations on broader platforms than any creed-bound church
approves. One of the latest illustrations of this character is
found in Los Angeles, Cal., where Professor W. C. Bowman,
formerly a Methodist clergyman, has organized the u Church of
the New Era." Its aims are thus set forth by the local press : —
Its design is to meet the social, industrial, intellectual, moral, and
spiritual demands of such liberal and progressive minds as do not find
these demands sufficiently met in any of the existing organizations to
satisfy the requirements of the present and the approaching era. It will
have no creed, but will be devoted to the advancement of truth and pro-
motion of every human interest, social, moral, civil and religious, for
humanity's sake. Help will be given to the unfortunate, not as charity
to a pauper, but as justice to a child of the human family.
A movement along this same general line has been already
advocated by the talented Kentucky writer and worker, Mary
Cecil Cantrill, who aims to organize, in every county in her state,
societies to be known as the Sons and Daughters of Columbia,
each member of which will be pledged to aid every needy soul
within the compass of his or her power, to further educational
work in every feasible way, and as far as possible seek to develop
all that is best in the human soul.
Of still greater significance as a further illustration of the
unmistakable trend toward concentration of the most vital thought
on the broadest basis, is the substantial work already accomplished
by the ethical movement in New York under the able direction
of Professor Felix Adler. In spite of the bitter hostility which
it encountered from dogmatic and conservative thought in its
early days, this noble work has been pushed steadily forward ; and
in the positive success attained, as well as in the far-reaching
beneficent influence which is now being generally appreciated,
we see a practical illustration of the good which may be accom-
plished by concerted action of earnest, humanity-loving people.
The effective work already accomplished in this country and in
England, by the Neighborhood Guilds, due largely to the wise
direction of Professor Stanton Coit, affords still another illustra-
tion of the altruistic sentiment of the hour no less than the
practicability of a nation-wide .movement which shall combine
practical and helpful philanthropy with development of character,
arid shall be absolutely divorced from dogmatic theories or relig-
ion in the old conventional sense ; a movement broad enough to
include every man, woman, and«childwho hungers for justice and
love, and is haunted by a desire to aid others and develop self.
Believing that the time is ripe for such a movement, and that it
is not only feasible, but that its inauguration will be of incal-
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UNION FOR PRACTICAL PROGRESS. 81
culable benefit to society in the present transition stage of social,
economic, and religious thought, I propose to give some views,
merely as suggestions of what it seems to me might readily be
attained, and of a movement which, when once thoroughly in-
augurated, I believe will awaken an exalted enthusiasm among
thousands of our young men and women, calling forth in time
scores of splendid, God-inspired men and women who will prove
Lathers in moral courage, Wesleys in irresistible enthusiasm,
Channings in clear, exalted spirituality, Parkers in intellectual
intrepidity, and Whittiers in high, religious fervor. No thoughts
expressed or suggestions offered in the following lines, however,
are intended to be dogmatic. They are merely thrown out as
hints in the hope that they may be helpful in inaugurating a
union which I believe may be made a great moral and spiritual
lever.*
II.
The platform, as well as the name, of such an organization
should be broad as human need. Its purpose should be to help
mankind now and here to rise to nobler heights, to a broad
and just conception of life and individual responsibility, to
develop the character of all who come within its influence, and
increase the measure of human happiness. It should be abso-
lutely free from any theological bias, but in no way antagonize
the religious convictions of any one. On the other hand, it
should welcome into its fellowship all persons who desire to
increase the reign of justice and love, without the slightest regard
to religious belief or non-belief. The great ethical principle
underlying the movement should be the supremacy of love and
justice ; an every-day religion of love, exemplified in a perpetual
service to omr fellow-men.
The ethical purpose or underlying thought governing such a
movement as we are contemplating has been presented with
great power and clearness by Mr. Louis Ehrich in his admirable
paper " A Religion for All Time," the main thought being found
in the following extract from that thoughtful paper f : —
• Since writing this paper I have read with great interest, in the English edition of
the Review of Reviews for March, Mr. Stead's account of a movement along these
general lines which is already gaining a strong foothold in England. I refer to the
establishment of Civic Centres in the various cities. These are organizations which are
formed to aid the best and discourage the worst in city life. The progress bein^r
made in England is glorious, and confirms my impression that tho heart hunger of
the age calls for a new crusade —a great world union for the betterment of men.
t It may be weU to observe just here that the word •• religion " is in thU paper
employed apart from any theological significance. It is used in precisely the same
sense that we frequently use the term when we refer to a life which is made luminous
by a noble cause. As for example, we mi^ht say that the white ribbon work so nobly
carried on by Miss Frances Willard is to her a religion ; or that the red cross is a
religion to Clara Barton ; while in no sense would we convey the idea that those noble
workers for humanity were antagonistic to the special theological faiths which are
■acred to them.
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82 the arena.
The religion which will yet prevail among men will demand that
man shall love his neighbor more than himself; and the single tenet of
the all-embracing, world-sufficing religion will be, u Thou shalt love thy
Deighbor with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
mind." And u neighbor" will mean not only the nigh-dweller, but
everything that breathes and blossoms in the universe. If you conse-
crate yourself to the love and service of your neighbor, your whole life
becomes a love song to the Eternal. You love Him in the only way He
can be loved, — by loving His children and His creatures. Love to man
includes love to God, — just as the brotherhood of man establishes God's
fatherhood.
Just as the highest point in evolution on this planet is and forever will
be Man, so the highest in the religion of the race is and forever will be the
love of man for man.
Such a love for mankind can not only co-exist icith the highest sanity in
human affairs, — affairs of business and affairs of state, — it is the highest
sanity. It brings man into right relation with the world-all. Such a
simple religion of love will be a religion for all time. The highest devel-
oped man which this planet may produce will need no higher ideal. The
measure of love will grow with the measure of the man.
The ardent believer in such a religion of race love and race service is
fortified and dignified. His sympathies are world embracing. His
emotions are multiplied a million-fold. He joys with every joy of the
race, he sorrows with every tear that falls. He feels himself in unison
with the great heart of the universe. Every human being who in sin-
cerity tried to serve his brethren since the world began, is his own soul-
brother. Ho grows indifferent to public opinion. He looks his ego
squarely in the face, and realizes that all the world's praise or blame
cannot add or subtract one atom from the sum of his real soul-self. He
thinks himself higher than no man, lower than no man, except the man
who loves man more.
The faith and trust of the poor and weak is sweeter to him than the
praise and favor of the great and powerful. Rage and anger against
the evil and foolish give place to profound pity. The sorrowing mes-
sage to him from every fallen man and every fallen woman is, "This
would not be if thy generation and former generations had done their
whole duty."
Such a fuith will revolutionize education, because success in life will
have a different meaning. Not how much you have amassed, but how
much, in proportion to your opportunities, you have wisely given away,
will be the new test. The lower animals are trained for the struggle of
existence. Man, as representing the divine spirit, will be trained for
the stni££le of self-renunciation. Education will strive to unfold har-
moniously all the latent powers of the child; but the highest effort, to
which all others must be subservient, will be to unfold and develop the
spirit of love and benevolence. The first lesson at home and at school
will be, "Try to make somebody happier." No rules will be held so
important as the rules offered for the Arithmetic of Life: to add to the
happiness, subtract from the pains, multiply the joys, and divide the
sorrows of as many human souls as thou canst reach.
************
The saint of the future will be man-intoxicated. He will gladly burn
at the stake, if the expiring embers will light up the race to some
higher, nobler conception.
Such a religion will give a simple standard by which all men, the
king and the scavenger, can be truly measured. How much love for
man is there in him ? That will be the crucial test. That most con-
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TTNION FOR PRACTICAL PROGRESS. 83
temptible question of our times, " How much is he worth ? " will come
to mean, "How much of worth has he," — that is, how much of human
love and of human service burns in his soul. Wealth, position, ancestry,
mean nothing by this standard. Jesus can bo no greater if proven the
Son of God. He would not be less great if proven the son of the thief
crucified at his side. Rather more great. It is his infinite love which
has made him divine.
In this work we would encourage all sincere lovers of human-
ity, without reference to their church affiliations, their creeds, 01
beliefs, to unite with us. The Methodist, the Presbyterian, the
Baptist, the Unitarian, Catholic, Episcopalian, Agnostic, Hebrew,
Spiritualist, Mohammedan, Buddhist, and the follower of Confu-
cius — all would be welcome who felt touched by the world's
hunger and pain and misery sufficiently to desire to practically
aid in uplifting man and increasing the happiness of heart and
home.
Surely this work would make no true Christian any less a
Christian ; nay, it would necessarily fill him with the holiest
love, and make his work far more vital ; and while it would not
appeal to the conventional churchman who puts on his religion
once a week for a few hours, it would answer the heart hunger of
thousands of truly religious natures who fervently desire to do
some practical good in the world, but who, for lack of organiza-
tion and a directing brain, find the days flitting by with nothing
accomplished, and the soul's desire unsatisfied.
III.
The Name. — As before indicated, the name, like the pledge,
of such an organization should be so broad that it could not be a
stumbling-block to any one who wished to help his fellow-men.
This is a serious objection to a name like the " Brotherhood of
Christian Unity." I know that Mr. Seward, in arguing for the
name u Christian," says : —
It is a question to be most seriously considered whether, taken in its
true sense, such a society can by any possibility be other than Christian.
Would it not be far better to work under a Christian name, inasmuch as
the evils and falsities of the past are now being so rapidly eliminated
from the Christian faith?
But the difficulty with Mr. Seward's name lies in what it does*
mean to millions of people, and not what an ideal Christianity
might mean. There have been millions of people whose lives
have been made more terrible than death through the deeds of
those who not only claimed to be Christians, but who committed
their crimes in the name of Christ and for the glory of his religion
as they understood it. Take, for example, the Hebrews, who for
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84 THE ARENA.
centuries .were, robbed, persecuted, racked, and tortured by
Christian Europe, and who to-day are to a greater or less extent
ostracized. With the bitter history of centuries of gloom, and
the social ostracism of the present ever in their thought, we
could not expect them to enter an organization bearing a name
so repulsive to them as the church has made the word " Christian."
Again, in every town in America there are brave, clean, and up-
right men, who, because they have dared to read and think, have
become sceptics or agnostics, and for this loyalty to their best
convictions have been socially ostracized by the Christian commu-
nities. In many instances, they have seen their business fall away,
until they have gone into bankruptcy, all because they were true
to their reason and refused to be hypocrites. The same is true of
honest believers in various faiths deemed heretical by conser-
vatism. The recent persecution of the Seventh Adventists in
Tennessee, by those who are loudest in their professions of
Christianity, is only one of many illustrations which might be cited,
as rendering the employment of the term "Christian" unfort-
unate in the name of a society formed for the purpose of uniting
in a labor of love all people who are desirous to further the best
interests of humanity. In every community will be found
Hebrews, agnostics, and others, who, through inherited preju-
dice, growing out of the savage brutality of the past and the
more refined, but none the less cruel, persecutions countenanced
by the present, have come to look with bitterness on the word
" Christian " through what it has been made to mean ; and any
movement of this character should be world-wide in spirit,
application, and name. It should have a banner under whose
folds every tmie and aspiring sotd among every sect and faith,
as well as those who, after patient searching, have failed to find
God, could unite in the battle for a higher, purer, and truer
civilization.
Mr. Ehrich suggests the name " Order of Servants of Human-
ity " ; that is broad, comprehensive, and in many respects excel-
lent. The criticism that I should make is that the name is rather
cumbersome.
Mrs. Mary Cecil Cantrill prefers the name " Sons and
Daughters of Columbia." Both these names are good, although
I think Mr. Ehrich's preferable, as it embodies the spirit
of the new movement far better than the other appellation.
I would suggest the name " League of Love," as expressing the
thought in a short, terse, and easily pronounced phrase; perhaps
some would prefer the name " Federation of Justice." It matters
little, however, what the name be, provided it is broad and
impersonal enough to carry the great central idea of the
union.
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UNION FOR PRACTICAL PROGRESS. 85
IV.
The platform for the league should be simple yet com-
prehensive. Perhaps a pledge something like the following
would answer : —
Believing that the progress and the happiness .of the race depend on the
supremacy of that lofty love which comprehends the highest expression
of Justice, and stands for soul-developing freedom, I hereby agree, in so
far as lies within my power, to express by my every thought, word, and
action a deep, pure, and abiding love for every child of humanity ;
especially will I seek to brighten the lives and strengthen and develop
the characters of those who, through unfortunate environment, through
weakness or adversity, most need my assistance.
I promise at all times to demand the same ample and impartial justice
for the most unfortunate of my fellow-men, as under similar circum-
stances I should demand for myself. I promise to demand that each
individual be accorded the same fair and candid consideration in the
expression of his honest convictions which I should demand for myself.
Furthermore, appreciating the value of a broad or comprehensive
education in developing an ideal manhood or womanhood, I promise to
improve every opportunity to cultivate all that is best and noblest
in my own life, while seeking incessantly to stimulate the intellect
and develop the character of all coming within the scope of my influence
who may need my aid.
Something like this might be adopted as a general pledge,
while associations could organize and adopt such by-laws as might
seem most desirable.
The character and scope of work comprehended in a movement
of this nature would include a character-building education,
coupled with a systematic and far-reaching system of practical
philanthropy. Its mission would be the elevation of manhood,
the development of a world-wide sentiment of fraternity, and the
kindling of an undying passion for justice in the hearts of men.
Its method of work would be threefold : First, self-development,
or true character building ; second, the education of others upon
broad lines, special emphasis being given to ethical culture;
third, fostering virtue, probity, and happiness by the intelli-
gent administration of practical measures of philanthropy.
In a suggestive paper it is impossible to do more than throw
out hints. The lines followed for self-development would vary
largely, but in general they would include systematic courses of
reading, conferences, expositions, and the general interchange
of knowledge, conducted in such a way as to call out the best in
each character, while greatly widening the scope of intellectual
knowledge. Of course the readings and discussions would
include a full examination of ethics, which should be thoroughly
studied and fearlessly discussed, special emphasis being given to
the rights of man, woman, and child ; the duties of the indi-
vidual and those of society. But it is not my purpose to dwell
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86 THE ARENA.
on this feature of the work at this time. The great object would
be to mature, round out, and develop in each member a broad,
justice-revering, and loving character. The educational work,
as it related to others, would necessarily be carried on chiefly
among the children of an unkind fate — those who through birth,
environment, or other causes have been placed at a disadvantage
in the struggle of life. In every community are children and
young people who hunger for intellectual and soul culture, but
who have few opportunities to satisfy the cravings of their higher
natures; they also lack what to this class of persons is all-
important — a guiding brain and an encouraging word.
In every village and hamlet, as well as in towns and cities,
may be found poor little starvelings, whose brains and souls are
shrivelling and becoming hardened, so that the finer and more
exalting influences which may come into their lives are daily
making less and less impression. To seek and to save these
little ones would be an important work of this league, order, or
association; to call out all that is finest and best in these natures;
to show them that sin, crime, and degradation are to be avoided
as a loathsome contagion, and to give them what, in the nature
of things, they have never before enjoyed — correct ideas and a
new point of view.
One way to proceed would be to organize them into clubs, with
some members of the league as elder brothers and sisters in the
organization, whose duty would be to guide and direct the young
into paths of rectitude and create a hunger for knowledge. Be-
sides being guiding influences for these little ones, they would
ere long silently work themselves into the hearts and homes of
the unfortunates, becoming a wonderful factor in many lives.
Another method would be to select some members of the associ-
ation to teach these young people to sing. We all know that the
character of a child is largely moulded by the thoughts which
crowd upon its brain during the early years of life. Now by fill-
ing the young minds with songs, emphasizing the highest, purest,
and noblest sentiments, the life of each child would insensibly be
lifted into a purer atmosphere, and in a certain sense his own
home would feel the elevating influence; thus, patriotism, love,
and admiration for that which is fine, high, and worthy of emu-
lation would be given to them through the subtle spell of music.
Let this be supplemented by a story which should embody some
ethical sentiments, told at each meeting by members appointed
by the officers of the association. For example, on one or two
evenings each week let the little wayfarers be taught singing by
members of the league who possess some knowledge of music ;
then after the singing let some one tell the children the story of a
noble life, emphasizing some of the great lessons prominent in the
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UNION FOR PRACTICAL PROGRESS. 87
character discussed. Five or six stories of this character might
be given in order to impress lofty, patriotic sentiments, and illus-
trate the genius of free government. One night the story of the
life of Washington; another that of Franklin, then Jefferson,
Hamilton, etc. These stories should abound in incidents and
anecdotes which would make them interesting to the children,
and would at once place in their minds high ideals and a sentiment
of pure patriotism. Such a series might be followed by a course
of lessons emphasizing, in exactly the same manner, fidelity to
truth, justice, love, moral courage, unselfishness, and other vir-
tues. Children are fond of stories ; histories and biographies are
full of thrilling and instructive passages which can be used
to impress the noblest ideals upon the plastic mind of
youth; and in this way, without appearing to do more than
interest and amuse, the child's brain will be filled with lofty
ideals. Older children could be taught economics by first read-
ing to them stories dealing with social problems, and later
by simple expositions, accompanied by homely illustrations
which they could understand and appreciate. In all this work,
the children should be encouraged to question and to com-
municate their own views. Once a month the members might
give a picnic supper to these young people, their parents,
and others — not as a charitable feast, but for the purpose of
social intercourse ; and at these suppers it would be the duty of
members to come in touch with the fathers and mothers as
friends, brothers or sisters. How does the saloon-keeper and
ward politician to-day exercise such a potent influence in govern-
ing our land ? By simply coming in touch with these poor people.
Now, through orders or leagues such as we are discussing, the
members would be brought into rapport with these unfortunates,
while the various beneficent measures inaugurated would have a
tendency to divorce them from the worst influences in our social
life, as a part of the regular work would be to provide concerts
and various forms of healthful amusement, and establish circulat-
ing libraries, coffee houses, reading rooms, free lectures, kin-
dergarten and sewing schools for Saturday afternoons. This
method of work would enable the league to study individual cases,
the weakness and need of various members of the community,
carefully, without the unfortunate ones being embarrassed by
feeling that they were under the scrutiny of others; while
through the knowledge thus gained, help of the most en-
during and beneficent character could be rendered. In connec-
tion with this broad system of ethical and constructive work, the
league would be qualified to carry out successfully a practical phil-
anthropic work which would look toward making men and women
independent and self-supporting. Of course, these are only the
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88 THE ARENA.
meagre suggestions which would apply to work in hamlet or
village, as well as in towns and cities.
This labor of love — this practical, every-day religion — would
require far less time than at first thought would be imagined.
It would, however, involve the hearty co-operation of all
the members; but this co-operation could be expected, as the
movement would appeal only to those who were fired with
a real love and enthusiasm for humanity. It would call to its
service picked souls — three or four from one church, four or
five from another, six or seven from without the church, seven or
eight from some other religious faith — and thus by united action
each community would soon be aflame with that love-fire which
alone can in any real sense bring about the brotherhood of man;
to use the apt expression of the author of " Ai," " A levelling up
and a levelling down would be carried on," while all hearts would
be happier, all brains broadened, all souls made more God- like,
and all minds more capable of appreciating that great funda-
mental principle upon which any enduring civilization must
rest — justice. At first the work would be modest, growing only
in proportion as the interest increased. In cities the scope
of labor would be much greater than in smaller places; and
though at first comparatively little might be accomplished, in a
reasonably short time, through systematic agitation and earnest
work, help and sufficient money could be raised to establish free
reading-rooms, courses of free lectures and concerts, kindergarten
and industrial schools, reading circles, circulating libraries, and
other agencies for the diffusion of light and the elevation of life ;
while the league could also collect data, facts, and statistics of
the most vital character for pushing forward a great social
reform work.
V.
Is it Practical? — This brings in the question which has prob-
ably ere this occurred to the reader. Does it possess the element
of practical utility ? I answer that not only is it eminently prac-
tical, but its inauguration should be of the highest concern to
every true patriot and lover of humanity. To prove that it is
feasible, I need only cite some facts already accomplished along
precisely the same lines, in face of the opposition of conservatism,
and by individuals working almost single handed. In the work
wrought by Professor Stanton Coit in the establishment of Neigh-
borhood Guilds, we catch a glimpse of what might be done by a
nation-wide movement. Here one man, practically alone, organ-
ized, two years ago, with eight members, in London a Neighbor-
hood Guild, having for its object briefly the following work : —
To carry out, or to induce others to carry out, all the reforms —
domestic, industrial, educational, provident, or recreative — which tht
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UNION FOB PRACTICAL PROGRESS. 89
social ideal demands, along lines which comprehend, an expansion of the
family idea of co-operation.
Every club, to be a healthy centre of social development, must also
interest itself in the outside world and its needs. Industrial and polit-
ical movements must claim its attention, at the same time that it pays
due regard to the physical and mental culture of its members.
In its social reform work, the Neighborhood Guild does not even limit
its efforts — as is becoming the fashion of the hour — to the rescue of
those who have already fallen into vice, crime, or pauperism. Equally
would it touch and draw to itself the whole class of self-supporting
wage-earners, not only with the object of preventing them from falling
into these worst evils, but also of bringing within their reach the thou-
sand higher advantages which their limited means do not at present
allow them individually to attain.*
Mr. Coit, two years after the inauguration of his first
London club, had succeeded in founding ^ve fine, well-
organized clubs with a combined membership of two hundred
and thirty members. These clubs have provided, among other
things, a circulating library, Sunday afternoon concerts, Sunday
evening lectures, a Saturday night dance for the members, a
choral society, and from fifteen to twenty classes in various
branches of technical and literary education. They have also
impressed the members with a desire to plant new guilds and to
push forward practical reforms of general interest.
A movement, which has accomplished still greater results, is
being carried on by Professor Felix Adler and his Society for
Ethical Culture, in New York. When Professor Adler opened
his work, and called on all friends of society to aid in his broad
humanitarian labors, enunciating as a rallying cry, "^Diversity
of Creeds, but Unity of Deeds," he encountered the same bitter
opposition from narrow- visioned creed-worshippers and easy-
going conventionalists that the contemplated movement is sure to
call forth from the same elements. He was charged with attempt-
ing to destroy religion. Dr. Adler, however, pursued his high
and noble calling, unmindfulof misrepresentations and unjust crit-
icisms, ever seeking to aid his fellow-men in a real and practical
way. And if he lacked the over-mastering enthusasism of an
intense and fervid nature, he brought to his work cool judgment
and a high measure of practical common sense, wedded to ripe
scholarship. It is not my purpose to go at length into Dr.
Adler's work ; but as illustrating what has been accomplished by
a society in a single city, in spite of bitter and unreasoning oppo-
sition, where even now comparatively few people fully appreciate
its real object or its nature, and the scope of its work, I cite a few
of the many practical and beneficent results which have already
been realized: (1) An Ethical Platform, or Forum, has been
established, for the impartial presentation of the great ethical,
• «< Neighborhood Guild," by Professor 8tanton Coit.
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90 THE ARENA.
social, and economic problems of the day, and the fair discussion
of all the great questions which vitally affect society. (2) Educa-
tional Work. This society established one of the lirst kindergar-
ten schools in the United States ; and at once, through efficient
management, it became a Mecca for those interested in this noble
work. It has now an elementary school, which educates chil-
dren up to the fourteenth year. In these schools are between three
hundred fifty and four hundred children, who are forming strong,
moral characters by intelligent and systematic ethical culture.
Industrial education, as well as moral culture, forms a part of
the curriculum, while there is also in the school an atelier, in
which freehand drawing and modelling are taught. This insti-
tute is a centre of the new education, where a systematic effort is
being made to develop full-orbed manhood and womanhood. (3)
Practical Philanthropy is also a great feature of Dr. Adler's
work. Through the instrumentality of his society, a model tene-
ment house has been erected in the heart of the worst tenement
region of New York, where, under wonderfully improved condi-
tions, about one hundred families enjoy life who before only
existed. The income from this home yields four per cent on the
investment. The establishment of this model house has com-
pelled other landlords to improve their houses greatly, and in
various ways this social experiment has been beneficial. This
society has a guild for visiting and teaching crippled and invalid
children of the poor who are unable to leave their homes.
Many other plans of a practical character are in successful
op 3 ration.
This brief outline of Dr. Coit's success in establishing Neighbor-
hood Guilds, and of Professor Adler's society, demonstrates the
feasibility of a nation-wide movement, which would in no way
antagonize the work of the church, but which, while in no sense
sectarian or theologio in character, would necessarily make every
true Christian more deeply religious, and would give every lover
of humanity an opportunity to work for his fellow-men, securing
the far-reaching good to society which can only come through
organization. Such a union, too, would doubtless greatly arouse
and stimulate Christians to battle for humanity rather than wran-
gle for forms, rites, dogmas, and creeds which have largely para-
lyzed the altruistic spirit of civilization; and it would have a
wonderful influence in bringing about an ideal brotherhood,
regardless of race, color, creed, or belief.
VI.
As the landscape broadens when the traveller ascends the moun-
tain, so would the vision and scope of work increase as this league
or order pressed from the accomplishment of one noble work to the
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UNION FOR PRACTICAL PROGRESS. 91
realization of other dreams of love and justice. Then, again, what
a leverage for the highest good would come through this volun-
tary co-operation of brains illumined by the spirit of altruism.
The chosen souls of America, from ocean to ocean, from the
lakes to the gulf, would be united in a threefold battle for practi-
cal progress — self-development, the development of others, and
wisely directed philanthropy. A new educational impulse would
thrill through the republic. People who have struggled with
the same great longings and desires, but who have felt almost
alone, would feel the wonderful stimulus born of union of
thought and deed expressed in one great brotherhood acting in
unity, and representing, as Professor Adler puts it, " A Diversity
of Creeds but a Unity of Deeds." The "levelling" system
would go on rapidly, as from ocean to ocean faithful bands
would be working for a common purpose — the supremacy of
Justice, Wisdom, and Love.
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OUR NATIONAL FLOWER: A SYMPOSIUM AD-
VOCATING THE CLAIMS OF THE MAIZE.
BY J. M. COULTER, CHAS. J. o'MALLEY, MARGARET SIDNEY, ELLEN
A. RICHARDSON, MARY NEWBURY ADAMS, M. K. CRAIG,
WILL ALLEN DROMGOOLE, ELIZA CALVERT HALL.
I. THE MAIZE.
I have given the " national flower " but little thought, and
have not had its necessity seriously impressed upon my mind.
So far as the appropriateness of any flower is concerned, from the
sentimental or artistic standpoint, I must leave that to the poets
and artists. As to the botanical appropriateness of it, I feel free
to speak. It surely should be a native of America, and not a
transplanted alien.
Maize, or "Indian corn," appears to be a native of South
America, but it has the great advantage of being distinctly
occidental. Botanically, it would satisfy the conditions ; artisti-
cally, it surely can be made effective ; while from an economic
point of view, it could not well be excelled. Whether it has
developed any association strong enough to make it endure in
national sentiment, I do not know. However, as probably the
best known distinctly American plant, I am inclined to favor the
subject of this symposium. John M. Coulter.
President Indiana University.
II. A PLEA FOR MAIZE.
Those who believe in the theory of predestination, as applied
to nations and individuals, find much in the history and appear-
ance of maize to encourage them in their efforts to secure its
adoption as the emblem of our country. It is, first, distinctly
American. It was here when Columbus came. It was here
when the Pilgrim Fathers landed, when ill-fated Raleigh estab-
lished his colony, when Lord Baltimore set foot on Maryland.
It became the food of the infant colonies; and before their arrival
it had nourished tribes and races, every vestige of which is now
lost in the dusk of myth and tradition. Archaeologists not a few
now admit that it was known and used by the Mound Builders;
yet who 6hall tell us more of that strange people ? They lived,
they loved ; they rose as nations rise, they fell as nations falL
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OUR NATIONAL FLOWER. 93
All the rest is surmise — only, they knew maize. It was their
food, and became that of their conquerors. In like manner it
became ours. We succeeded to it, as to an inheritance preserved
for us by Time himself ; and to-day, with all its unknown past, its
legends, its myths, it feeds the mouths of our hungry, as through
centuries it gave sustenance to peoples of lesser intelligence and
duskier hue. Empires have fallen, but this simple plant remains
— u the survival of the fittest," for the fittest, and surely for some
purpose other than utility.
It has been observed that, in some mysterious manner, the symbol
of a nation bears some resemblance to the nation itself. Viewed
in this light, the maize seems providentially designed as a type of
our nationhood. It is tall, stalwart, and firm-rooted in the parent
earth. Like our nation, too, it is armed at all points with sword-
like blades for the protection of what it possesses of truth and
good. The ear is one composed of many, each in its place, rank
after rank, and all united, drawing strength from, and giving life
to, one common stock — the cob, or constitution — that unites
all, yet leaves all free. Again, like our nation, its culture has
overspread the continent. From Columbia to Cape Cod, from
Lake Superior to Florida reefs, its blades flash in the morning
sunshine. On ten thousand hills, in ten thousand valleys, it
quivers and shudders through the deep, death-still noons of
August ; bringing forth bread for the nation, for the little mouths
to be filled, for all the old and for all the young, and for the
young and old of other lands beside. Yet, again, it is our own,
and associated with our greatness in the past. It has nourished
the greatest minds of our great century. It murmured in the
ears of Webster in New Hampshire, it whispered eloquence to
Clay, Calhoun, and Garfield. Around the hill where Abraham
Lincoln first drew breath, tall corn rustled its banners in the
evening wind. These ate of it " and became like gods," rugged,
strong, unyielding — men with thews of steel, letting fall thoughts
that dropped like blocks of granite. It was with Washington in
storm and peril, and fed his hungry at Valley Forge, in the snows
of winter, the heats of summer ; and it is no picture of the fancy
that leads us to contemplate the Father of his Country, in the
evening of his life, sitting on the porches of Mount Vernon,
soothed by the murmur and the fragrance of the cornfields round
about him. We love to so think of Jefferson, Madison, Jackson,
of the great and good of all sections — patriots, statesmen,
heroes — to whom it has given strength. Let what may be
urged against it, surely it deserves honor as one of the " makers
of America."
In point of beauty it is not deficient. Erect and firm as our
natural honor, its slender, stately form unites strength with grace,
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94 The arena.
as did the Greek sculptors in their works of old. Without
coquetry, it is yet attractive ; modest, it is still a creature of love
and warmth. Beautiful with a clear-cut, classic beauty, and use-
ful with sweet, womanly thrift, it resembles the mothers of those
patriots whom it fed. Unlike the golden-rod, of which we lately
hear so much, it does not type a people ruled by a rod of gold —
ideals of glitter and tawdriness. Such a peculiarly suggestive
emblem is unsuited to us as a whole. We desire something sym-
bolic of our strength, hope, courage, truth, beauty, and unity;
something typically American, selected as well for its inner beauty
as for outward show ; something endeared to us through years of
struggle, and in some sense identified with and instrumental in
our national and intellectual progress. In what else than maize
can we find symbol more fit? Poets — those priests of the beauti-
ful — have rendered homage to its beauty ; poets north and south,
poets east and west. All the world is familiar with Long-
fellow's tribute to it in his "Song of Hiawatha," telling how
Hiawatha saw a youth
Coming through the purple twilight,
Dressed in garments green and yellow.
Plumes of green bent o'er his forehead,
And his hair was soft and golden.
The late Sidney Lanier dedicated to it one of his noblest
poems, under the simple title, " Corn." The gentle Georgian
found it full
Of inward dignities
And large benignities and insights wise,
Graces and modest majesties,
and it is to humble maize that he thus speaks in this ripest of his
musings: —
As poets should,
Thou hast built up thy hardihood
With universal food
Drawn in select proportion fair
From honest mould and vagabond air;
Tea, into cool, solacing green hast spun
White radiance hot from out the sun.
So dost thou mutually Jeaven
Strength of earth with grace of heaven;
So dost thou marry new and old
Into a one of higher mould,
So dost thou reconcile the hot and cold,
The dark and bright
And many a heart-perplexing opposite.
Little has been said, hitherto, of the fragrance of the blossom-
ing maize, and little can be said here ; only if it be true, as an old
poet tells us, that " The odors of moist flowers are their souls,"
then the lowly maize has a fragrant soul indeed. It is the most
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OUR NATIONAL FLOWER. 95
delicate, yet most refreshing, of wayside odors. Any one who has
ever loitered among green lanes at twilight, with heavy dews
hanging thick round about upon blade and tassel and silky floss,
will bear witness to this. It is an uplifting fragrance, an aroma
that is a benediction. What emblem yet suggested possesses
aught like it ?
Finally, a country's emblem should be typical of the country
itself. It should possess qualities of tendency to inspire the
Washingtons, Websters, Clays, and Lin coins yet to come. It
should be something endeared to the mass of the people through
intimate association, either through struggle or triumph, or both ;
something they know already ; something they respect already.
Mere gaudy masses of color, devoid of fragrance, association, or
utility, would never provoke inspiration in souls inured to the
practical. To the great majority they would remain as did the
yellow primrose to Peter Bell. The American mind loves truth
and grace when wedded to the tangible, the real. Strength it
loves, and beauty, but it demands that they shall exist to some
purpose. Our people are worshippers of purpose. It may be a
weakness that prompts us to desire ttie beautiful mated to the
practical — yet that the typical American is so intellectually con-
structed, few will deny ; and those whose difficult duty it is to
select a national flower emblem for Brother Jonathan should
bear this in mind. Charles J. O'Malley.
Hitesville, Ky.
in. OUR NATIONAL EMBLEM. THE HISTORIC AND DECORATIVE
QUALITIES OP THE MAIZE.
"The strength of a chain is in its weakest link." The
weakest link in the chain of reasons for the adoption of maize
as our national emblem is that too much can be said in favor of
it ! People like to argue hard against something.
But let us have the reasons why — first, historically, and
second, for decorative purposes — we should choose the maize for
our national emblem. To be sure, authorities differ (when do
they not?) as to the rightful claim, put forth by every nation
on the face of the earth, to. the place of nativity of the corn.
Let us look at some of them. The array of names hospitable
to the idea that corn was of eastern origin is a good one :
M. Bonafaus, of Sardinia, in his labored treatise published in Paris,
in 1836, declares it was of Chinese origin; Bock, a botanist, in
1532, is equally positive that it came from Arabia, and he calls
it the a wheat of Asia " ; Ruollius also asserts that it came from
Arabia ; Crawford, in his " History of the Indian Archipelago,"
says that " Maize was known there under the name of Djagoung
long before Columbus discovered America"; while as to the
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96 THE ABEKA.
Chinese enthusiast, Li- Chi-Tchin, he thinks that he has the strong-
est case of all for believing the maize to have originated in
China ; Fuchsius sets it down as coming from Asia and Greece,
thence travelling to Germany and Turkey, where it was called
the " Wheat of Turkey " because the " Turks controlled all Asia
at that time " ; Regmir and Gregory bring out fresh arguments
for its eastern origin, one being that Ble~de~ Turquie varieties were
brought from France or China. (" As well," ejaculates Moreau de
Jonnes, " say that the name of the English horse bean proves
that plant to have originated in Britain " — this utterance was in
that memorable address before the Academy of Science at Paris.)
De Jonnes thoroughly believes in its American origin ; so do
Roulin, Humboldt, Bonpland, and a long list of others equally
entitled to a hearing. The point that M. Rifaud, in his " Voyage
en Egypte, 1805-1807," made in finding specimens of maize in a
subterranean cave, and, by this, proving that it was undoubtedly
of early Egyptian origin, is entirely set aside by M. Virey in his
"Journal de Pharmacie." "It was," to quote him, "Indian
millet {Sorghum vulgare) which Rifaud mistook for maize."
This grain is, according to Delile, a native of Egypt.
If one is still inclined to follow the trail of the learned
authorities who have from time to time hunted the corn down,
we can add Vasco Nunez, who discovered it in Guiana;
Amadas and Barlow, who found it in Florida; and Goncalo
Ximenes, who claims to have seen it growing in New Granada.
Let us look a little closer into the European names — BU
d* Indie and Trigo des Indians. It is more than v. conjecture,
it is a fact, that they were so called because the grain was
brought by Columbus from America — then called "Indies."
It is known beyond a doubt that Columbus found waving fields
of corn awaiting him at Cuba and other points which his
caravels touched on his first voyage to America; the corn being
described as "growing on stalks of the size of canes, bearing very
large and weighty spikes or ears, each generally yielding seven
hundred grains a bushel, and which when planted in warm and
moist land frequently produce three-hundred fold."
The earliest historians of both North and South America give
the strongest testimony that corn originated in America. No one
who has studied into the subject at all can fail to find records
proving the aborigines to have depended on it for food from a
remote time. Inca Garcillasso de Vega gave long accounts of
the methods by which these early Indians reduced this grain to
their needs. He called it " mayz " ; and tells " how the women
ground it, and then made it into a dish called 4 apt ' " (which is
our hasty pudding), a culinary feat that evidently awakens his
highest admiration ! He says, " It was esteemed high feeding,
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OUR NATIONAL FLOWER. 97
but not common at every meal." How we wish that the New
England boy, with his inevitable daily mush and molasses, could
have heard good Inca !
And then, all sorts of foods and drinks were made, while it
was the only known " materia medica " at that time — plasters,
poultices, and pills being concocted from this very useful maize.
Undoubtedly the whole gamut of their human necessities was
reached and sounded in the magic word "Corn." Even the stalk,
at a certain time, when the maize was ripe, made a sort of honey ;
those of the Indians who were not satisfied with a saccharine
beverage, brewing a decoction in its effects not unlike the " fire-
water " of modern days.
And so on, through a long list of worthy defenders of the
American origin of the maize, bravely supporting their theory.
Schoolcraft, in his report, says very truly that " the maize was
not known in Europe before the discovery of America, and that
the Indians taught us how to cultivate it." One proof of the
American origin of the corn must strike any thoughtful person ;
it is indigenous all over the broad sweep of America, from the
Rocky Mountains in North America to the forests of Paraguay
in South America, up the Pacific coast to Oregon, and from
Canada down the broad stretch of the Atlantic to the mouth
of the Colorado River — its growth only bounded by the shores
of the two Americas.
Quite a singular fact is unnoticed by those who would force
the claim of the East as a birthplace of the corn — that Nearchus,
commander of the fleet, does not speak of it during the expedi-
tion of Alexander the Great ; neither have other historians re-
marked on its presence in India ; nor is there any trace of it in
ancient sarcophagus or pyramid, or the wonderful works of art
with which those eastern countries teemed at that and subsequent
times. They give no indication of corn as an object familiar to
the eyes of the poet, painter, or sculptor. It remained for
America to discover the decorative and picturesque qualities of
its plume-like leaves, the fine outline of the stalk with its accent-
uated fibre, the nodding tassels, and the bursting wealth of
ripening ears. All these were faithfully imitated in the " palace
gardens " of the Incas in Peru.
There were many beautiful ceremonies, in which the corn played
a prominent part, that these Incas observed in their ancient rites.
One of them was to cast a portion of the maize, when they har-
vested it, into the "granaries of the public and the Sun and
the king," believing they should receive a blessing for it, and as a
token of gratitude; and then each plucked out a few grains to
mix with his individual store, under the belief that he should not
want for bread foreverafter. It may be from this custom that
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98 THE ARENA.
our New England habit obtains, of giving each person, at the
bountiful Thanksgiving board, five or six grains of corn to eat as
a preliminary course. It is a beautiful idea, and we thank the
Incas for it. They had their harvest festivals and feasts, when
the young men and maidens would come home, singing and
chanting, from the fields, burdened with the overflowing store,
and imploring their gods for its future growth. What a subject
for a painter's brush! The glowing imagery of mythological
environment; the emotional fervor of the self-taught savage;
the wealth of nature's gift in its matchless beauty of stalk and
leaf, of tassel and pendent ear, in its varied colorings. Could more
be desired? We have looked long, hoping that some artist of
our day would set his pencil toward this splendid theme. Per-
haps one will even yet, in the near future, arise to this work.
Fortunate will he be who first grasps fame in this way !
It would be the best impetus to the work of securing the
American voice in unanimity for the maize as the national
emblem, for artists to introduce it into their work; painting,
sculpturing, and drawing its component parts with growing love
for its beauty and picturesqueness. It lends itself so wonder-
fully to the decorative in art. It is grace itself — strong, clean,
and incisive of outline, as a mountain lioness silhouettes against
the sky.
A pretty legend is told of the Ojibways. " A young man
went fasting into a forest. He sought," so the legend runs, " a
gift from the Master of Life. After watching and waiting,
a spirit came in the guise of a beautiful youth, attired in brilliant
green, with waving plumes of emerald sheen on his head, who
bade the other to wrestle with him. So the trial of strength
was made that very day, and every day until the sixth. 4 To-
morrow,' said the beautiful spirit, * is the last time we will try
our powers. ' You will conquer me. Bury me then in the soft,
fresh earth. There I will lie obedient to the will of the Great
Father. Then watch for me.' The young Indian promised to
do as he was bidden ; and before another moon, he saw the
tender, green, plume-like leaves appear, thrusting their way up-
wards from the dark earth ; and in due time the graceful tassels
and yellow fruit. * Behold,' they cried who came to see this
wonderful thing, * it is the spirit's grain ! ' and so they gathered
and ate and made a feast. And this is the origin of the Indian
corn."
Due credit should be given to that zealous New Englander,
William Cobbett, for his efforts to bring the Indian corn before
the public. " Corn-mad Cobbett " (as he was called) introduced
the maize in England in 1828. Being such a devotee to it, a
contemporary says that " he wrote Indian corn, planted Indian
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OUB NATIONAL FLOWER. 99
corn, raised Indian corn, ate Indian corn, made paper of
Indian corn husks, and printed a book on Indian corn paper."
More interesting yet is the experience of Elihu Burritt, the
learned blacksmith, quaintly told by himself.
I have just got out " An Olive Leaf from the Housewives of America
to the Housewives of Great Britain and Ireland, or Recipes for making
Various Articles of Food of Indian Corn Meal," containing all the recipes
I received before leaving home from our kind female friends in all differ-
ent parts of the Union — Heaven bless them ! I have had two thousand of
these " Olive Leaves" struck off, and intended, in the first place, to send
a copy to every newspaper in the realm. I shall have a thousand, all of
which I shall put into the hands of those I meet on the road. I have
resolved to make it a condition upon which I only consent to be any
man's guest, that his wife shall serve up a johnny-cake for breakfast, or
an Indian pudding for dinner. I was invited yesterday to a tea party
which comes off to-night, where about thirty persons are to be present.
I accepted the invitation, with the johnny-cake clause, which was readily
agreed to by all parties. So to-night the virtues of corn meal will be
tested by some of the best livers in Birmingham.
Coming up to our time (as we count time from 1620, when the
Mayflower touched the bleak and barren coast of Massachusetts),
we find there awaiting the Pilgrims a possibility of food that
nature had given to the early settlers who preceded them. The
maize, or Indian corn as we know it, was the only thing that
stood, for a long while, between them and utter extinction of
the feeble little colony. They drew for weary months their very
existence from it; it even sheltered their ever-thinning ranks
from the ravages of the Indians, when fields of it, planted over
Plymouth Hill, deceived the wary eyes of the watching savages,
who from a distance were watching graves of the settlers who
died in rapid succession. It was faithful to the colonies even in
death. The Indian corn should be more to us, for this one reason
alone, than any flower or other emblem could possibly be. It
demonstrated the possibility of obtaining a foothold in the
country, and establishing that little colony of loyal adherents to
that true faith, whose love for it drove them from other shores
to find a refuge in the New World. The Indian corn for our
national emblem, the Mayflower for the state flower of Massachu-
setts, for each state should have its emblem.
Another powerful reason why the maize should be bound to
our flag in our hearts — it is the most wealth-producing staple
of our whole land. The following extract from a recent journal
is so good that, despite its length, we quote : —
The Indian corn proper grows in every state in the Union with little
cultivation, but it is cultivated in six states to a marvellous extent.
Quoting from a recent article written by a thoughtful man, who was
trying by every means in his power to introduce the Indian corn into
Germany for the array, I give this remarkable statement : " We then have
something like two billion bushels of corn every year, and we have six
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100 THE ARENA.
states which produce over one billion bushels. Have you any idea what
this means ? Forty bushels of shelled corn is a good load for a team of
horses; and if you would load that crop upon wagons, putting the noses
of the horses 1 heads to the tail-boards of the wagons in front of them, the
line of wagons would reach away in a straight line for more than one hun-
dred fifty thousand miles. If it could cross the oceans it would go six
times around the earth, and have nearly five thousand miles of wagons
to spare. A single year's crop of American corn would make a road of
wagons forty-four abreast from New York to San Francisco; and if this
amount were loaded in five-hundred-bushel lots in freight cars, the train
would reach from the West to New York, across the Atlantic Ocean,
across Europe, and nearly to the Pacific shores of Asia before the last
car was on the track. These cars would form four continuous freight
trains from New York to San Francisco, and they would block up all the
trunk lines of the country. And the most of this corn comes from only
six states, though corn can be raised in nearly every state of the Union.
Out of every thousand acres of arable land in the country, only forty-
one are devoted to corn. If the price is raised by this European demand,
we will have millions upon millions of acres of new cornfields. Suppose
we increase our areas only one tenth, this will add fifty million dollars
to our corn receipts, and the money received from corn by us is enor-
mous. We get more out of our cornfields every year than we do 'out of
our gold, silver, and lead mines. Our corn receipts are greater than all
the dividends of our railroad stocks, and they are more than all the
dividends of our national banks. As it is now, if we can get an increase
of five cents a bushel on corn, we will add one hundred million dollars
to our receipts of this year; and if you could divide this increase up
among the families of the United States, it would give more than six
dollars a family. Our corn crop in 1889 was worth more than seven hun-
dred million dollars, and I expect it to run into billions when these
people here [in Germany] are eating corn bread."
America alone produces the corn in such vigor, beauty, and
perfect wealth that it shows it is " to the manor born." It clings
to our fair country with all the love of nativity ; while it shows
progressive ideas, virility of action, and love of change, that
enable it to encircle the globe with its wealth-producing results ;
while its adaptation to the different soils and climates proves it to
be, without reserve, a friend to all humanity.
Not only is the Indian corn to be put before the eyes of the
American people as the most desirable emblem that the nation
can select, on account of its history and its wealth-producing
power, but because it is beautiful to the eye as an object. It is
purely decorative, in a dignified way, and appeals to every human
sense. Look at the broad, waving, plume-like leaves, always
graceful, and easily lending themselves to the delicate, undulating
movements that the artist likes to portray. Look at the tassels,
either beautiful in the freshness of the early summer-tide, or stiff
with the cold of crisp autumn when the corn-stalks are gathered
into bundles by the farmer! Look at the ears, delicate with
their green coverings, when the kernels are swelling out into
rich, luscious food, or when these same protecting husks have
burst, to show the splendid, rich red or golden ears in full
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OUR NATIONAL FLOWER. 101
fruition ! In whatever light you view the cornfield, either on a
gloomy day, when the clouds hang low, or in the bright sunshine,
it is beautiful. It is poetic. It is picturesque.
It is due to the late Mr. Daniel Lothrop, the publisher, to state
that the use of corn in a decorative way, was tried by him, many
years ago, with fine results. He arranged it in his dining-room
in festoons of the long red and golden ears hanging in the corners
and by the fireplace ; tassels were put over pictures, and the long,
spathe-like leaves were draped above windows, drooping over the
curtains, where the light and shade gave out new tints to add to
the glory of the corn. It was an innovation in an unpopular
direction, for people then thought little of corn except to eat it ;
but after the decided refusal on the part of the innovator to see
any better decoration, the beauty began to dawn upon those who
came within the precincts of the room, and after admiration had
been allowed to grow slowly, came the positive love for the
beautiful emblem.
In early boyhood Mr. Lothrop had insisted that " the corn was
the greatest thing [to use his boyish phrase] that the United
States ever grew," and he, as a small child, would pluck the ears,
bringing in the most beautiful ones of all shades from the farm,
to hang them around the rooms of his family home, selecting, in
like manner, tassels and the sheaves, to put them up amid the
derision of his little playmates, who didn't believe in bringing in
such a common thing as corn. Years but increased his love and
admiration for the Indian corn. In every way he publicly stated
this whenever an opportunity offered, always insisting that the
Indian corn, or maize, should be our national emblem, and the
Mayflower, the flower selected for Massachusetts. He patiently
studied into its history, and was intending to write a monograph
on it. This, with many other things planned but not perfected
in his busy life, was broken off by his sudden passing on to his
heavenly home. And he believed the union of the Indian corn
with the flag of our country, when a decorative effect for special
occasion was to be aimed at, resulted in as perfect an emblem of
peace, prosperity, and hope as any loyal American could desire.
He again demonstrated this when " Wayside" grounds — the old
home of the late Nathaniel Hawthorne — were thrown open for a
garden party in honor of Mrs. General Logan, then visiting the
Lothrops at u Wayside," Old Concord. Along the broad piazza
hung a flag forty feet long, raised to its height to show the glori-
ous stars ; festooned with numerous stalks of corn, sheath, tassel,
golden and red ear in all their beauty. Sheaves of same in differ-
ent varieties were at either end of the veranda, under whose roof
occurred the literary exercises of the day. The effect was start-
ling, as many had never seen the conjunction of corn with the
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102 THE ARENA.
flag. It was voiced by all : " It is our emblem. Long wave the
corn, as our flag has waved and ever shall ! "
Mrs. Harrison, the woman beloved by all, not because of her
exalted position, but for the true American principles she incul-
cated and adorned, who passed away at the White House last
year, was at " Wayside," visiting, the autumn previous. When
she saw the old dining-room, Hawthorne's beloved southwestern
room of which he spoke so tenderly in his preface to "The
Tangle wood Tales," — "The sunshine lingers here lovingly the
better part of a winter's day," — she was astonished and de-
lighted at the beauty of the corn decorations. She was searching
for perfect ears of corn to sketch from for artistic effects at the
White House ; for she was an enthusiast on the subject, and a
most ardent adherent to the cause of the maize.
Let our authors, our artists, our poets, and our people, one and
all, take thoughtfully to heart this duty a loyal American owes
to the Indian corn ; and let us choose it for our national emblem,
that, as long as the American flag shall wave, shall be ours
forever — a symbol and ensign of what our country means to
every soul within her borders.
The day has passed in which we could say, " We do not need
a national flower." We are to have one. Let us see that we
choose aright, the only one that has entire claim upon our regard
— the glorious, golden maize !
Hail to thee, corn!
For wide as the sea,
Are the waves of thy fields
O'er the land of the free.
With blessing benignant
Thou crownest our days.
We choose thee our emblem,
O, glorious maize !
Margaret Sidney.
Boston, Mass.
IV. AN ARTIST'S PLEA.
The selection of a national flower calls for research into the
depths of sentiment, and serious consideration, when we note
that its adoption into the architecture and art products of this
passing age will evermore repeat the history of our formation
period.
At present we have no such record ; our buildings are perish-
able, and our productions are without a central thought of design,
— a central thought which would be to the diffusion of art
design what the heart is to the human body, a centre of vitality,
a source of circulation of the life-blood of the individual.
Necessarily we have been so far a practical country, absorbed
in utilitarian pursuits, when things have been built and judged
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OTJB NATIONAL FLOWEB. 108
by a standard of usefulness, rather than sentiment. But senti-
ment is not dead; it has its roots in the desire to create the
beautiful, and to preserve the landmarks.
To arouse it into action, let an Old South Meeting-house or a
Boston Common be demanded for utilitarian purposes.
Sentiment is at the very beginning of this selection; if the
subject were only for the occupation of idle fingers, and useful
only as the means of gratification of curiosity, then it would be
unworthy of our examination ; but the reason of this symposium
is because we regard the subject as of great importance to the
human mind. First, Why should we want art at all? then,
What do we want it for ? are questions at the^ foundation of the
further query, What kind of art will meet the demand ?
When we consider how general sentiment has been, in all ages
and among all people, it can only be explained that art, through
which sentiment has expressed itself, has always been a necessity
to human happiness.
Its resources in the form of architecture or pottery have at all
times, especially in great epochs, been seized upon to express the
conditions of the races. The vessels which have been used by
different peoples, and have been preserved to us, are the clearest
manifestation of the condition of domestic industrial art among
them.
History as recorded through art is a thermometer of national
development; and therefore it is most fitting, as we are now
marking a milestone in the progress of our nation, and sentiment
has been stirred by different centennial celebrations, from that
held at Philadelphia seventeen years ago to the present Colum-
bian, that we should consider some sign of our past prosperity
which shall embody and perpetuate a truth concerning the strug-
gles and triumphs of the first settlers of our country.
Our architecture and our pottery declare us to be beggars
beating about for cast-off raiment, getting that which does not
fit us exactly — for we have taken anything to hide the art naked-
ness of our sterile age, while we grow an art idea.
Is not the condition of society and our art education such that
a central idea may now be adopted, with benefit both to our
future productions and to our history?
The gradation of ornament suitable to enrichment, as given by
an eminent art teacher, is in the order of vegetable forms, as foli-
age and flowers, being first, animal forms second, and, if at all,
human figures third. Human heads and human figures ought to
be considered too important to be used for ornament. The use
of heads alone, with no regard for proportion to other parts of a
building, and often as a substitute for all other ornament, is savage
ignorance. Terra cotta columns, decoratively treated from the
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104 THE ARENA.
•talk of Indian corn, the " staff of life," are more fitting, with
the symmetrical ears conventionalized in the capitals, than human
figures bearing the weights, suggesting pain from enforced em-
ployment. There are resources enough in foliage to satisfy a
considerable love of decoration ; and 1 know of no plant or flower
which lends itself more fully to analysis of form or color than
does the Indian corn, indigenous to our soil, and identified with
its very life.
The existence of symbolism in design is an element of interest
always ; in coats of arms, in mottoes or seals, it lingers among us.
We hav.e a national symbol in our flag, upon which a star is
placed for each state in the Union. Now we are called upon to
select a natural product of the soil which shall express a thought,
and form, in harmony with the blood of our people, not merely a
passing sentiment that with increasing art education will cease to
express our feelings, but a native style which shall display in its
details the governing influence of the period in which we live.
Considering the imperishability of ceramic tiles, and the per-
manent record which may be made in forms and colors upon
their surface, I am interested to have public sentiment adopt, not
only honest, permanent material, but also that emblem from our
natural productions which shall be the best reflex of our social
life, and which lends itself most perfectly to every phase of dec-
oration. The progress of art at home and abroad, like many
branches of the natural sciences, lias reached a point where it
should boldly take a stand, investigate, discover, and speculate,
until the central sentiment is recognized in some natural produc-
tion, which shall aid us in design to stand side by side with the
most eminent of European contemporaries.
The prosperity of Egypt was associated with the overflowing
of the Nile, which brought fruitfulness to the soil and food for
the people. As a recognition of this, we find the prevailing form
in ornamentation is the lotus or water-lily — symbol of plenty
and prosperity.
The winged globe was carved over the doorway of every
Egyptian temple — the globe meaning the earth, and the eagle's
wings, spread on either side, meaning dominion.
In Roman art the chief characteristic was the predominance of
military trophies ; and so every people that has had a history will
be found to be possessed of symbolism, for that is but the expres-
sion of history.
There is no end to the history contained in the crests and
arms of the principal families in every European state, but it is
all expressed symbolically. The rose of England, the thistle of
Scotland, and the shamrock of Ireland, are symbols of the three
countries.
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OtJB NATIONAL FLO WEE. 105
So long ago as 1855, one of our most eloquent statesmen dwelt
lovingly and often upon a product of our agriculture which to
him seemed at once a central idea of our present existence and
the purest symbol of our eternal destiny. I refer to Edward
Everett's speeches, and to a special one made in response to a
complimentary toast at a dinner of the United States Agricultural
Society, which seemed a fulfilling prophecy to our nation. He
said, referring to our Indian corn : —
Drop a grain of our gold, of our blessed gold, into the ground, and lo!
a mystery; it softens, it swells, it shoots upward; it is a living thing
... it arrays itself more glorious than Solomon in its broad, fluttering,
leafy robes ... it spins its verdant skeins of vegetable floss, displays its
dancing tassels; and at last ripens into two or three magnificent batons
(ears of Indian corn), each of which is studded with hundreds of grains
of gold, every one possessing the same wonderful properties as the
parent grain, every one instinct with the same marvellous reproductive
powers.
Is not this a wonderful central thought, embodied so truly in
our Indian corn that we could wish no grander emblem to in-
carnate into our works of art ?
Then see the similitude by which his eloquence would convey
to our poor minds some not inadequate idea of the mighty doc-
trine of the resurrection : —
To-day a senseless plant, to-morrow it is human bone and muscle,
vein and artery, sinew and nerve, beating pulse, heaving lung6, toiling,
ah ! sometimes overtoiling, brain. Last June it sucked from the cold
breast of earth the watery nourishment of its distending sap vessels, and
now it clothes the manly form with warm, cordial flesh, quivers and
thrills with the fivefold mystery of. sense, purveys and ministers to the
higher mystery of thought. Heaped up in your granaries this week,
the next it will strike in the stalwart arm, and glow in the blushing
cheek, and flash in the beaming eye; till we learn at least to realize that
the slender stalk which we have seen shaken by the summer breeze,
bending in the cornfield under the yellow burden of harvest, is indeed
the "staff qf life" which since our nation's earliest history has sup-
ported the toiling and struggling masses on the pilgrimage of existence.
Ellen A. Richakdson
Boston, Mass.
V. THE MAIZE IN ANCIENT CIVILIZATION, AND ITS SYMBOLIC
SIGNIFICANCE.
Woman's symbolic plant should bear a message to teacb our
descendants what we have learned to-day. To be typical, it must
be truthful.
Sappho's voice is winged from her distant isle. She says : —
There danger dwells where dwells not Truth.
Nor gold, nor gems, nor rosy youth
Shall friendly be when Truth hath fled.
The soul that knows her not is dead.
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We can see that the soul which is quickened by the truth is
more alive and enthusiastic, with a vitality coming from sym-
pathy with nature and the long history of one's kind. Symbols
are inspirations to our art, which is but the permanent form of our
collected knowledge, radiant with gleams of thought from all
time.
The symbolic plant for woman is maize, and the emblematic
flower clover, because typical of her work in evolving civilization ;
and they are more potent than battles gained over enemies.
The power of England rose when Sir Richard Weston's wife
brought the Phrygian women's red clover from Bohemia, in 1645.
With it came, hid in its spherical blossom, their liberty cap for
industrial citizens, men and women. That noblest of cereals, the
prolific maize plant, was the kind providence that met the
Europeans, adventurers and settlers in America. Massachusetts'
queen had it in perfection.
Every race dates its rise from savagery to barbarism by woman's
discontent in brutehood, and her desire for humanhood, to be in-
dependent of others' will, and, by inventive tact and skill, to
revolve on the axis of her thought and will. Her power in soci
ety sways up or down, by man's knowledge of the laws of the
sphere, for these laws are her laws. Speaking in the language
of hieroglyphics, her first child is a son to till the soil, gotten by
the help of Almighty power, a thought its father. The matri-
archal power sought to cultivate in men submission of individual
will to the good of the hive, for co-operation in planting and
gathering the harvests at the time the stars and moon decreed.
Securing safety and food for their young has been the motive-
moving instinct awakening to minds of mothers, in neurotic ecstasy,
ways and means that would not be thought of in a cooler and less
sensitive head. Ability for variation and to differentiate from the
beaten track are those very traits which quickened curiosity into
activity, which was the beginning of reason or comparison.
" Sweet is the genesis of things,
Of tendency through endless ages."
Uncertainty of food supply from hunting and fishing, the
union of the often helpless and ill mothers, through sympathy for
one another — in fact, their hindrance from following pleasure as
they might be attracted — were the very circumstances that gave
them time to reflect, and to avail themselves of a food supply
that should be the result of their industry, foresight, and econ-
omy. With the grain-eating mothers and children, with milk and
honey, came a decrease of the fighting propensity of the meat-
eating races. So the mother's boys became helpful to her, and
they did not call labor a slavery or a fall of mankind. They saw
that those were the rulers who gave the food supply. So th$
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OUB NATIONAL FLOWEE. 107
agricultural class was formed, and mankind rose from savagery to
self-directing progress. The leaders of the flocks and herds,
proud of their exemption, from labor and dependence on the
earth's seasons, and the careful detail of planting and economy,
were without a woman's patience, a woman's industry and
care in preserving seed, and in the making of pots and bags.
The chief of the priest of the Druids, with cross and shepherd
crooks, symbols of authority of one over many, of the imperial
reign of man over flocks, elated with his collection of secret
knowledge, kept from the vulgar herd of men ; drove down his
flocks upon the despised women's fields, and those men who
labored and sacrificed to their god with harvest offerings, the
result of their thought and work. Druids had contempt for those
who sought salvation through works of their own, and by human
sympathy, or by delight in creation and co-operation. The un-
ending battle for the salvation of mankind began. The World's
Exposition is the last great expression and triumph of the matri-
archal ideal. Humanity has entered into the inheritance of the
earth.
These United States are the legitimate outcome of the char-
acteristic traits and tastes developed and evolved through long
centuries, nurtured by the matriarchal ideals of industry, sub-
mission to general good, selection by knowledge and reason, and
having love, generosity, hospitality, and help for all human beings,
as children of one world-family.
It was through the cultivation of maize that man was domes-
ticated and curbed license. The same is true to-day. A Dakota
squaw appealed to missionary women for protection, not ten years
ago, from the roving Indian men, who fed their cattle on her
grain, and sneered at her sons and upbraided them for submitting
to be made as oxen to serve, by labor — " Take pony, ride away and
be free, be no squaw-man to work." It took long ages of mar-
tyrdom, of courage, suffering, and faith in their religion, which
was that the moon (measurer of time), stars (watch fires), and sun
(for heat) would direct, and earth give blessing, if they were faith-
ful laborers. They did not have the full proof that a laborer is a
co-worker with laws of the universe, but inborn instinct gave
firm faith. They compared precarious supply of blood food
with the good, sure harvests they could gather, and aspired and
yearned to make the good prevail ; their faith
" New born, new blessed with larger trust
That heaven was near and God was just."
Providence is not discerned in the details of human endeavor,
but is revealed by the continuity of events. The maize fields
tended by women in India, Egypt, Mexico, and Peru, the clover
meadows everywhere civilization goes, did not seem important
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108 THE ARENA.
factors ; yet they were, in shpwing the advantages of the womanly-
traits brought out in their cultivation, and that mankind could
control their food supply if they had knowledge. This the
matriarchal women through ages worked out by foresight and
labor for those who followed. Man's strength destroyed enemies,
repelled the domination of tyrants on land and water, and sought
new scenes for plunder ; while woman grew her grain in little
fertile nooks uplifted high among her mountains, where she went
for summer work, and with sweet scented fields of clover lured
the milch cow from the herd and gently trained her from wild
ways to serve the woman's nursery of little ones.
This summer resort, with wide sea-view and sky about the
Mediterranean shores, gave the study of the calendar of the
skies for her direction. She reckoned time by the dim crescent
which measured her year and divided it with ever the same regu-
larity. As days grew short, she sought with safety the stony
ledge and rock-protected sea-beach where Poseidon supplied fish
and protected her bountiful isle of plenty. Her caves, her gran-
aries, the baskets and pottery, the cotton, flax, and bark, willow
and maize leaves — all these she utilized, and by her labor and de-
sire for the beautiful and good awakened the divine spark of
thought and aspiration; and civilization to-day rests upon the
traits of character and habits the great mothers cultivated. Maize
was woman's first help. The beauty in the home and art gallery,
the ability to be hospitable and to see the world, still rest upon
plentiful corn crops. Without the tall, graceful, prolific plant, so
responsive to good care and right conditions, typical of woman,
the Republic could not have been hostess to the world this year.
For centuries before their descendants had the brain to organ-
ize a system of astronomy and have symbols for abstract facts,
these mothers of the grain field, with their little patch of maize
put here and there, where soil was deepest, best, with sun in
plenty, were awakened into wonder,-love, and reverence by the king-
dom of heaven. They, too, tried to work on earth as they were
aided from above : —
" Stars help us by their mystery,
Which we can never spell."
Disciples of Ceres and Xilonen, cultivators of maize and other
grains, established permanent settlements, and grew portable food,
that could be kept from decay, a nerve-making food.
Lift high their symbol, grain. Put it in the Woman's Build-
ing at the Exposition, and remember them in reverence when we
say, " As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world
without end." If this is true, then why not study the beginning ?
Why not cultivate our curiosity for knowledge, our reason-giving
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OUR NATIONAL FLOWER. 109
ability to compare good with evil, and aspire, too, to such ideals
as we are capable of and longing for ?
We can never outgrow the emblem of grain as representative
of woman's thought and work, and the symbols of crescent and
star and sun that aided. Through all time they shine for cosmic
knowledge, true in all places and with all races, while cross and
crooks and crowns symbolize points in history and are used by
the imperial rulers of mankind. Mary Newbury Adams.
Chairman Historical Committee, Woman's World's Congress
Auxiliary.
VI. OUR GREAT REPUBLIC'S EMBLEM.
Let the rose, queen of flowers, bloom for England ; let Ireland
honor the shamrock, Scotland her thistle bold ; let the lily unfold
her pure white petals, sprinkled with the gold of her anthers, for
the joy of France ; but let the shield of our great republic bear
the stalk of bounteous, golden corn.
Born of America's soil, from Superior's shore to Chili's border
land, from Atlantic coast to the broad Pacific's edge, interwoven
with memories of Mound Builder, Pueblo, Inca, and Montezuma —
our own peculiar plant, the corn, so rich and fair, is Columbia's
fit emblem.
The sunflower bears its regal head only in favored climes, and
is limited to narrow use ; but the sheaves and grain of the golden
maize bring joy, plenty, and comfort to north, south, east, and
west, to man and beast.
The regal helianthus, rearing its head to the sun, answers the
purpose of art ; but is not the necessity that corn is for poor and
rich, the solace in hovel and palace.
Our maize, too, with its graceful banners of green and tassels
of gold, a poem without a tongue, a model for artist's hand, an-
swers the full requisition of art — beauty, combined with utility —
yet is a harbinger of summer's feast and comfort in winter's cold,
of cheer and rest, a value unmeasured by the elegant sunflower.
The Heaven-sent maize was an emblem of peace from Powha-
tan, an offering of love from Pocahontas to Smith, in the dark
days of Virginia. The prosperity of Plymouth was assured by
the harvest. of golden corn, and the sacred meal was an offering
in Peru's holy temple.
America's land could spare from thoughts of the past and needs
of the present, the royal sunflower ; but the rarest boon of the
republic we love is the plenteous, golden corn.
No clime nor soil finds its like in *our prolific maize, a thing
of beauty in spring, a dish for summer's festal board ; and when
autumn comes with reaper's song, the golden sheaves and bounte-
ous grain are garnered for winter's cheer.
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110 THE ARENA.
Other climes may dispute with us the parentage of golden-rod
and helianthus ; but no land can claim America's child, the beauti-
ful maize.
Let each state, if she chooses, select her own emblem, — the
laurel to crown the lofty heads of Maryland's mountains, the
arbutus to gladden the North, the jasmine to twine the magnolias
of the South, — but let our wide republic's emblem be the plant
that knows no north, no south, no east, no west.
Since the people of the United States are known abroad as
Americans distinctly, let our shield herald the children of our
great republic as Americans, by bearing on its face, side by side
with the victorious eagle, the noble corn that strews the plains, glad-
dens the hearts, and cheers the boards of America's homes, from
the Canada of the North to the Argentine Republic of the South.
Let us honor the cornfields, as broad as our continent's breast,
with a history as old and mysterious as that of the people of our
own western world, interwoven with our daily life, with the his-
tory of our past, with the needs of the present and the hopes of
future prosperity. M; K. Craig.
Dallas, Texas.
VII. A VOICE FROM TENNESSEE.
" land of crag and cedar brake,
And low, sweet valleys lush with corn;
O land of violet and lake,
Where plenty tips her blooming horn.
44 Where men are loyal, women sweet,
And life moves with reluctant feet.
Sweet land, I lift my voice for thee,
My own beloved Tennessee."
We grow sentimental when the subject of a national flower is
introduced, and fail to look beyond sentiment, indeed, when cast-
ing our vote for an emblem worthy our glorious country.
Utile cum dulci. Ours is a country where the ideal and the
real are strangely and strongly blended. Born of a great agony,
rocked in the cradle of adversity, nourished at the breast of
despair, she has indeed been perfected unto her present position
step by step, blow by blow, until now, sitting serenely among her
quiet victories, her gates wide open to the world of commerce,
her foot upon the seas, her head among the stars, the whole
round world points to her as an example, looks to her as a model
of prosperity and of beauty. Utile cum dulci.
In honoring her present and in selecting an emblem that shall
mark her future, it is meet that we remember her past.
The emblem should be commemorative of her struggles, no less
than her successes ; her hardships, as well as her victories ; that
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OUR NATIONAL FLOWER. Ill
within her which is useful, no less than that which is ornamental.
That which sustained her poor little life at the outset, and which
became at last the ladder upon which she mounted to perfection,
would surely represent her more truly and more becomingly than
any flower that blooms in hedge or hollow. The golden-rod and
the arbutus, the lily and the rose, all lifted their pretty heads to
cheer and comfort her struggling infancy. But it was the maize,
the strong, the beautiful, the God-given, that furnished life to her
starving pioneers — maize, coming from nobody knows where,
claimed by one for tropical America ; by another, unearthed in
the tombs of Peru ; by another, given to Asia ; by another still,
to Spain ; in the hands of the Arabs in the thirteenth cen-
tury; and by another declared to have originated solely in
America.
Be that as it may, it is ours to-day, at all events — ours, like
the old negress' cabin, by right of possession. The old woman
had been ordered to vacate the cabin — a rented one — because
of failure to pay her rent.
When called upon to get out, she met the officer in the door-
way, planted her arms akimbo, and replied : —
u Lor', honey, I cyan't gib up dis here place ; 'tain't no use
a-talkin'. I done lib here so long I spec' it belong to me."
So with maize : we have claimed it so long, 1 spec' it belongs
to us.
Thus we have the tea of China, the rice of India, the coffee of
Brazil, and the maize of America.
But I must not forget that my territory is Tennessee, and that
I am asked to speak for her. I am always ready to speak for
Tennessee. God made her, loved her, gazed upon her hills, and
lo ! they hid their faces in his clouds; smiled upon her vales, and,
warmed beneath the gentle radiance, they burst forth into green
and gold, fanned by soft winds that whisper of perpetual sum-
mer, and nourished by bright streams forever rippling witlj the
ecstasy that smile of His begat. Who would not speak for Ten-
nessee? Who could be silent when a voice is wanted? Rele-
gating u Hiawatha " and the encyclopedia to the background, I
shall speak alone for her, advocating her claims, and promising
her approval.
Tennessee, like " all Gaul," is " divided into three parts." Each
part is as distinct from a political, a salubrious, and an agricultu-
ral standpoint as from a geographical. Yet with all her variety
of soil, climate, and people, there is not a county within her bor-
ders where maize is not extensively cultivated, and where it
would fail to find a strong endorsement as a national flower.
No emblem could be more appropriate. The Cumberland and
the Tennessee, hurrying down from the mountains to the Ohio,
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112 THE ARENA.
seldom lose track of the cornfields crowding the coves, climbing
the heights, and following the trend of the waters from the mo-
ment they start upon their journey to the point at which they
leave us.
The old Tennessee, sweeping past the cabin in the hills, echoes
the call of the ploughman in the cornfield ; winding about the
base of old Lookout, she rushes again into the maize fields, and
only leaves them for a peep into Alabama ; returning, however,
full soon to find the fields of our western border ; refusing to be
tempted by the big Mississippi, inviting her to mingle waters and
hie to the Gulf through the slumberous swamps of Louisiana.
Beautiful, indeed, are the cornfields of Tennessee. Beautiful !
beautiful ! from the green shoot to the golden fodder, where, at
sunset, the song of the laborer floats down the river, and the call
of the wagoner echoes along the bluffs that shut in the u Big
Bottom? the great cornfield of Tennessee.
Utile cum didci.
I was in the mountains of Tennessee, stopping for a day's rest
in the cabin of an old man who had, to all appearances, selected
the most barren spot in all that world of barren heights and
beautiful visions upon which to build his hut.
The mountaineer is a dreamer of dreams, a believer in destiny,
and a letter of " well enough alone."
While we sat for a moment under the low porch, drooped
beneath a burden of jack-bean and morning-glory, the old man
nodding over his pipe, the old woman (looking like a lost witch
from Endor) "knocking us up a bite to eat," one barefoot,
brown boy, half grown, sleeping in the sunshine on the doorstep,
a young girl turning her spinning wheel at one end of the porch,
and half a dozen children, with as many dogs, less one, playing
about the door — the thought came to me, vaguely at first, but
becoming more distinct as I dwelt upon it : Could that old man's
life, as it awoke between the pauses of his pipe, and my life, so
full of change, unrest, and tireless endeavor, would they, could
they, ever possess one thought, one pulse-beat, in common ?
44 How do you live, away up here in the hills r*" I asked him,
later. He tapped the palm of his hand with the bowl of his pipe
as he replied : —
" On corn."
" On corn," said I, " only corn ? "
"Jest corn, stranger," he insisted. " I've got a plumb pretty
field of it in the cove at the foot o' the Ridge. It ud do yer
good ter see hit. I sot my house up here a purpose, so's I could
overlook that thar crap growin' in the cove. Hit's pritty ; hit's
pritty in the shoot an' in the blade, an' hit's pritty in the silk an'
taysle. An' in the year hit's pritty, too, an' in the fodder. An'
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OUR NATIONAL FLOWER. 113
hit's good : we-uns lives on it up here. We grind it inter bread,
an' we grind it inter liquor, an' we feed it ter the hogs fur bacon.
Hit's bread an' meat fur we-uns, that cornfiel' air."
Aye, thought I, and drink. And again the old pharisaical pity
arose in my heart, as I wondered what common touch could unite
in one thought the soul of the old mountaineer among his hills,
and that of his countryman in the crowded marts of the valley.
But as I rode down the mountain, overlooking the warm little
cove where the green blades and golden plumes were nodding a
gentle good by from the tips of the tall, green corn-stalks, I
involuntarily drew rein.
The national emblem ! The old man in the hut, nodding over
his pipe, and the woman in the valley, fretting over her desk,
might have " a thought in common " after all — a thought that,
leaping like the lightning along the charged wires of the mind,
could unite all grades and callings in one common emblem.
The banker and the day laborer, the belle of the city and the
beauty of the hills ; the minister in his pulpit, the broker in his
office ; poverty and plenty, use and beauty, mind and muscle,
hill and valley — all would have a representative in maize ; each
find in it its own distinct and appropriate emblem. Maize, our
staple and our strength, which, spurning no soil, claiming no
climate, hampered by no surroundings, offers itseit alike to all, a
sustainer of life, and a joy forever.
Utile ctim dalci: Tennessee asks no nobler emblem than her
own best product. Will Allen Dromgoole.
VIII. — THE SONG OF THE CORN.
I am Beauty' s priest in the summer days,
When lily and rose are born;
And the fair world yet is fairer,
For the springing of the corn.
Oh, tall and strong and beautiful
I stand in my serried shades;
And the poet dreams, as the sunlight gleams
On the green of my waving blades.
And the painter flings his brushes by;
For what can his colors do
With the lights and shades on my leafy maize,
When the breeze goes wimpling through?
The hand of sculptor never made
A shaft more straight and fine
Than my tasselled stem, where the gold silk hangs,
And the morning-glories twine.
And never a strain from the strings of harp,
Or the throat of a bird at morn,
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Holds more of music's very soul
Than the wind on a field of corn.
But the realm of Art is a little part
In the world of man's endeavor;
And above the song of wind and bird
A murmur soundeth ever.
And I see, through the glory of summer sides,
Men's faces gaunt and wild;
And mournful clear, I seem to hear
The wail of a hungry child.
And oh ! for a voice to sound above
The wind and the wild bees' humming,
To answer the cry of God's famishing ones,
" Be patient, for I am coming! "
Then I thrill with the joy of giving,
And I welcome the autumn's cold,
That ripens the ear in my folded husks,
And turns my green to gold.
Servant of God and servant of man!
I smile at the reaper's knife,
And give my part with a willing heart —
My life for humanity's life.
Oh! better than summer's rapture
The joy that winter yields,
When December' 8 moon shines coldly
On the sad, deserted fields,
Where bereft, alone, I proudly stand,
A soldier that will not swerve —
A mailed knight in armor bright,
Whose motto is, "I serve"
Eliza Calvert Hall.
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ISLAM: PAST AND PRESENT.
BY FREDERIC W. SANDERS, A. M.
In following the interesting discussion of Islam's future, which
has been carried on in The Arena, it has seemed to the writer
that the first requisite for an intelligent judgment as to what it
will do for humanity, is a candid consideration of what Islam
really means, and how it has served mankind in the past. The
Christian world has long misunderstood the teaching and the
spirit of the Koran, and has therefore been unable to interpret
aright Islam's successes as a missionary faith. As long as this
misunderstanding continues, our forecasts as to Islam's part in
the future development of religion must necessarily be wide of
the mark. It is the purpose of this article to give, as briefly as
may be, a general view of Islam's teaching, and, by an impartial
comparison of Mohammedanism with Judaism and Christianity, to
learn, if possible, the secret of the Koran's past triumphs over
the Bible.
The Koran's author was of an eminently practical turn of mind.
Such a question as that of necessitarianism or free will he did not
undertake to discuss. And, indeed, I know of no philosopher or
Christian devotee who has been able to express satisfactorily the
truth with regard to it. The position of the majority of Chris-
tians, as of the majority of the books of the Bible, is apparently
inconsistent as to this matter. So was the Koran, but less so, it
seems to me, than our own Bible. The author of the Koran
appreciated the difficulty, and showed his practical wisdom by
dismissing the question. " Sit not with a disputer about fate,"
says he, " nor begin a conversation with him." He seemed to
think it was not necessary to settle the question, since it had
pleased God to reveal His will through the prophet, and to save
those who should obey his law. What need had the faithful
Moslem to determine whether his acceptance of Islam would have
been impossible without God's predestination, since if he did
accept it, that was sufficient evidence that God had determined
him to ; and if he did not backslide, that was evidence that God's
intention was to show him favor to the last and to save his soul.
The Koran has no philosophical system connecting religion and
morals. Its supreme truth is that there is one God y omniscient
lift
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116 THE ARENA.
and omnipotent, who blesses and curses at His awful pleasure.
It is not for man to inquire into His inscrutable ways, or to argue
about His justice. He may open hearts or close them to His
truths as He wills. But this Supreme Being is merciful and com-
passionate. He has sent His prophet to proclaim His existence
an3 announce the moral law. He is at liberty to damn you at
pleasure, but of His wondrous good will He has given you a simple
law, by obeying which — and thereby elevating your lives — you
shall attain everlasting felicity. God stands for the eternal prin-
ciple; the prophet for the definite moral law. What connection
there is between these is found in the mercifulness of Allah.
Mohammed showed his practical sense, not alone in avoiding
controversy as to predestination and free will, but also in the
organization of his church. The observance of the sacred month
and of pilgrimages was an adaptation of existing customs. These
he could readily turn to the higher use of keeping the Moslems
in touch with each other and with the new faith. The old forms
reconciled them to the new content of religion. So simple is the
faith of Islam that without the simple ritual, prayers, and fasting,
the volatile and irreligious Arab might soon forget and neglect
so transcendental a religion ; but while these serve to keep his
religion continually before him, the pilgrimages keep up the fel-
lowship between the various tribes, and maintain it a catholic
religion. Yet necessary to the organized religion as these instru-
mentalities are, it was only by transforming existing institutions
that the reformer could hope to effect his purpose with the inde-
pendent son of the desert, impatient as he is of any sort of
restraint. By adapting the old forms, the prophet avoided the
necessity of imposing new restraints ; and his practical wisdom
shows itself still further in the fact that these regulations are not
hard and fast lines that may not at any time or under any circum-
stances be set aside. But, instead, provision is made for those
who are unable to follow the regulations without injury, and they
are expressly released from the obligation or allowed to substitute
a more suitable for the prescribed time.
But great as is the care to make the creed and ritual simple
and acceptable, the emphasis is not upon them. The Koran
nowhere indicates that a man can be saved by ceremonies or by
correct belief, without good deeds. On the contrary, justice,
kindness, morality, are the conditions of salvation. It is essen-
tially a moral religion. While moral conduct is sometimes held
up as the means of salvation without mentioning right religious
belief, I do not recall a passage in which right belief is so men-
tioned independently of right conduct.
The charges commonly made against the Koran are : sensual-
ity ; that it teaches the propagation of religion by force ; that it
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ISLAM. 117
degrades woman, and does not regard her as worthy of immor-
tality ; and that it is hostile to learning and education.
As to the last charge, all that can be said about it is that there
is no truth in it. I do not recall a passage in the whole book
that has a word to say against secular learning ; and the* history
of the caliphates Bagdad and Cordova — under which science,
art, and literature flourished at a time when Christian Europe was
sunk in ignorance — indicates the falsity of the charge. Prob-
ably the untrue story, which lived so long in our histories, that
the caliph Omar ordered the library at Alexander to be destroyed
because its contents were useless, if in agreement with the Koran,
and pernicious if not, has done much to perpetuate this incorrect
view of the teaching and influence of the Koran. But the story
is now generally acknowledged to be untrue ; and the chief
destroyers of the library are believed to have been, not Moslem
warriors, but Christian monks. But even if the story about
Omar were true, that would not prove that the teaching of the
Koran was hostile to education. We should remember that the
Christian church, as sticfi, was hostile to the learning of Greece
and Rome for a considerable period, and yet it would not be easy
to prove that the Christian Bible was adverse to education.
As regards the status of woman, polygamy and other degrad-
ing conditions prevailed when the Koran was put forth. By
limiting and regulating these conditions the Koran did much to
improve her position, although it could not do away, at a stroke,
with all the circumstances that were hostile to her development ;
and the fact that the Koran is regarded as a final revelation has
doubtless had an unfortunate influence, by discouraging further
advance than that made by itself. There is no foundation for
the very serious charge that the Koran does not regard woman as
an immortal being. On the contrary, there are positive state-
ments in the Koran that women are admitted to paradise upon
the same conditions as men.
In reference to sensuality, it must be said that in practice this
is a somewhat relative term. Unquestionably, the religion of the
Koran is not as spiritual as that which Jesus taught, yet those
who denounce the Koran for sensuality seem to me to do so
inconsiderately. Were the same line of reasoning applied to the
Old Testament, it would fare no better, and even the teaching of
Jesus could be made to bear a false meaning.
It is said, for instance, that the heaven of the Koran is a
heaven of the senses, and reference is made to the houries, and
gardens, and fine raiment in substantiation of the charge. But if
we turn to one of these passages, as xcvi. 51, it seems to me that
the significant order in which the elements of the heavenly life
are mentioned quite disproves the assumption of a purely mate-
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118 THE AEENA.
rial conception of heaven. After naming the natural, or physi-
cal, and the social features of the heavenly state, the climax is
reached in " Grace from thy Lord^ that is the grand bliss!"
But aside from this, if the mere mention of sensual enjoy-
ments in the future state is enough to condemn it as a sensual
paradise, then the Heaven of the New Testament must fall under
like condemnation ; for in the gospel according to Mark xv. 25,
we read that Jesus said : " I will no more drink of the fruit of
the vine, until that day when J drink it new in the kingdom of
God."
As regards the Old Testament, the prize held forth as that for
which the Jews should strive was rather more than less material
than that of the Koran. It is true that piety, justice, and mercy
are inculcated by the later prophets — just as they are by the
Koran — as the condition of the favor of God ; but the reward of
this virtuous conduct, the Messianic kingdom, is not only a state
of sensual enjoyment, but the picture is frequently stained by the
representation of the chosen people as waging war upon their
neighbors, and glorying in their humiliation ! This is certainly
inferior to the Moslem paradise, which is for the faithful of all
races, and is a condition of peace and concord^ not defiled by war
and bloodshed. But, after all, the language in which the condi-
tion of the blessed is described is not of the first importance.
Language so used must necessarily be inadequate, — it is merely
suggestive, not dogmatic, — and it seems childish to insist upon
the literal sense of the words used. It was natural that to the
independent and sensuous Arab, whose chief suffering came from
heat and drought, an individual reward should be pictured in
which cool gardens and running water should play a prominent
part; while to the proud and patriotic Jew, whose keenest suffer-
ing came from the subjection of his race to heathen masters, the
reward offered just as naturally tpok the form of the triumph of
Israel over her foes.
We should carefully distinguish between the ideal of conduct
held before men, and the reward promised therefor. In our own
day, it is true, the ideal is itself the reward ; but with the Jews
and Moslems, whose souls were not yet high enough to crave
primarily the delight of doing good, the ideal was rather to be
found in the present earthly conduct demanded of them than in
the reward offered them therefor. Heaven was rather the means
of exciting them to high endeavor than the end to be attained.
They were induced to undertake a higher life by the offer of
something within the reach of their present comprehension.
The practical ethical value of the Koran, as of the Old Testa-
ment, was in the high morality it inculcated .as the condition of
salvation.
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ISLAM. lift
As to the charge that the Koran teaches the propagation of
religion by violence, — despite the fact that this has been so long
assumed, and the assumption has for the most part passed un-
challenged, — I believe that a careful, unprejudiced reading of
the Koran, in the light of contemporary history, will not sustain
the charge. It is true that there are passages in which the faith-
ful are commanded to kill infidels, but it is also true (although
this patent fact is ignored) that there are passages in which it is
distinctly stated that there shall be no compulsion as to religion,
and that moral suasion alone is to be used with the infidel, unless
he be the aggressor. Further than this, a careful examination of
the passages which seem to support the charge that the, Koran
teaches that infidels are to be forced to embrace Islam or buy
immunity, shows either that these passages expressly state that
this course is to be pursued toward such infidels as have aggressed
upon the faithful, or else they occur in some special revelation
given to direct the conduct of the faithful in some particular war
with their enemies, who, according to the prophet, have first
wronged the faithful. Their infidelity is not the cause of attacking
them ; it is not that which puts them in the category of enemies,
but it is a reason for special severity toward them, since they are
not only enemies of faithful men, but also hostile to God himself.
Such enemies are to be killed mercilessly unless they save them-
selves by embracing Islam, or contribute to the true faith by a
money payment to the prophet and his church.
It must be remembered that we are considering the teaching
of the Koran, not the practice of the Moslem world, or even of
Mohammed himself. I believe that the verdict of history is that
some, at least, of the wars waged in the lifetime of the prophet
were unjust. But he always seems to have professed to have a
reasonable casus belli, and not to have relied upon the mere fact
that his adversaries were infidels. The actual practice of the
Moslems can count for little in this connection. By the same
argument the forcible conversion of northern Europe, and the
torturing and burning of heretics, would be proof of the teaching
of such conduct by Christ.
I think it must be evident, from what has preceded, that there
is in Christendom a widespread misconception as to the ethics of
the Koran. The first reason for this is not far to seek. It is
simply ignorance, both of the Koran and of Mohammedanism.
Another reason, applicable in the case of these who do know a
little of the Koran, is that it is treated as a systematic code ; and
so some single expression is taken, without regard to the circum-
stances under which it was uttered, — and often without regard
even to the immediate context, — as representing the doctrine of
the Koran, Such a method of procedure would play havoo with
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120 THE ARENA.
the religious teaching of most Bibles, and certainly it would
grossly misrepresent the New Testament. The third and last
reason to which I shall refer is the confusion of the practice
of Mohammedan peoples with the teaching of the Mohammedan
Bible. (Certainly we should be sorry to have the teaching of
Jesus determined in this manner.) The most frequent and dis-
astrous form which this error takes is that of assuming that
customs which Lave their origin in ethics or local peculiarities
are the results of religion. Instances of this we shall have occa- •
sion to consider further on.
With all that can be said for Islam, even a prohibitionist would
doubtless admit that, on the whole, it is inferior to Christianity
as we know it. And in view of this fact we cannot but ask what
justification there was for its existence, and how it came to be
the power that it was and is. To answer this question it will be
necessary to make a little more elaborate comparison than we
have so far made between Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.
When we have made this examination, and considered the condi-
tion of Arabia and the neighboring lands at the time of the birth
of Islam, I think we shall find a very satisfactory raison cPStre
for Mohammedanism ; and having come to appreciate the justifi-
cation for its existence, we shall be the better prepared to point
out its fundamental error, and thus to form a just estimate of its
ethical value.
The catholic spirit of the Koran, in which salvation is for all
who accept God and are upright in their dealings, whether Mos-
lems or not,* is in marked contrast with the particularism of the
Old Testament. And the Koran is also the more humane of the
two ; for even those who would represent it as bidding the faithful
war upon infidels, would have to admit that to give the heathen
an invitation to repent before attacking them, and to accept their
submission and tribute, is more merciful than to attack them
without endeavoring to convert them, and, giving no quarter, to
put the last woman and child to death, after the victory is won,
which is the method of procedure advocated in the Old Testament.
But granting the ethical superiority of the Koran to the Old
Testament in these particulars, it seems strange, in view of the
superiority of Christianity to Islam, that the religion of Moham-
med should have met with the success it did in supplanting the
religion of Christ. The problem seems more difficult than it is,
because of the shifting content of what goes by the name of
Christianity. The Christianity of the nineteenth century is a
very different thing from the Christianity of the sixth century,
and neither of them is quite in accord with the New Testament.
This last-mentioned fact is one that is highly suggestive for us
* Vid. Koran v. 73.
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ISLAM. 121
in the present inquiry ; for it is far too often assumed that the
condition of affairs that exists in a given country, at a given time,
is necessarily the result of the religion then and there professed.
That many things attributed to religion should rather be attrib-
uted to ethnic influence, is shown by such facts as the extensive
use of judicial torture by Christian Europe late in the Middle
Ages, and even more recently, whereas little use was made of it
by the Moslems. Of course the respective merits of Islam and
Christianity have nothing to do with the matter, the important
thing being that Christian Europe was the heir of Greece and
Rome, and in the Roman courts torture was an established insti-
tution, while Moslem Asia and Africa took their civilization more
largely from the Semites and the Indu-Iranians.
Another instance of the vicious use of this Post-hoc-ergo-
propter-hoc argument is found in the assertions made as to the
condition of women in the Occident and in the Orient. It is well-
nigh universally assumed throughout Christendom that the greater
dignity and independence of women throughout Christian lands,
as compared with her condition in the East, is the result of the
superiority of Christianity over Islam and other religions.
It may seem bold to say that religion plays but a minor part in
producing this result, yet I feel called upon to make the assertion.
One feature of Islam does have its influence here, putting the
Moslem women at a disadvantage as compared with her Christian
sister ; and that is the non- progressive character of the religion,
the fact that the Koran professes to be a final revelation, the
ultimate rule of human conduct. But I am confident that a care-
ful consideration of the elements entering into the problem must
convince one that religion is but a secondary factor. The
Romans and Greeks were monogamous before the advent of
Christianity, and certainly the Roman matron was no mere doll.
But the Germanic peoples had no need of the example of Rome
to inspire them with a high regard for the dignity of woman.
According to the historians the position of the pre-Christian
Teutonic woman was a highly honorable one.
In view of these facts, it would have been strange if the
European woman had fared less well than she has, with or with-
out Christianity. On the other hand, the Christian women of the
East are still largely household ornaments or drudges. Consid-
ering these facts and that the Christian scriptures themselves
insist upon the subordination of woman to man, it seems absurd
to contend that woman's elevation comes from Christianity and
her degradation from Islam.
To judge a thing by its results is certainly a good way of
ascertaining its value, but still we must beware of the undying
fallacy, Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
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122 THE ARENA.
For my part, I believe that had Christianity never been sup-
planted in what is now the Moslem Orient, and had it never
found its way to Rome, but, instead, had Mohammedanism taken
its place as the religion of the Roman empire, yet, as the heir
of the Graeco-Roman culture and of the Germanic life and
vigor, that which is to-day Christendom, despite its hypothetical
Mohammedanism, would, in many respects, have a higher civili-
zation than the Orient. I certainly do not think there would be
such a difference as exists to-day, but I believe the difference
would still be in our favor. The difference between Moslem
Spain and Christian France during the Middle Ages, suggests that
Christianity is not the only important factor in our civilization.
Another gratuitous assumption made in comparing the two
religions is, that Islam is inferior to Christianity in that the latter
is peculiarly hostile to human slavery. We should face the fact
that the Old Testament allows and regulates slavery very much
as the Koran does, and the New Testament does not forbid it.
Further than this, it has taken over eighteen hundred years to
rid Christendom of human slavery, — indeed, it has not done
with it yet, — and within the present century it has been defended
from the Bible. Whether rightly or wrongly, is not for us to
decide here, the important point being that the matter is so far
from definitely settled by the Christian scriptures, that, while
modern Christians have taken issue with each other on the sub-
ject, the early church took slavery for granted. In the words of
Schaff : * " The church exerted her great moral power, not so
much toward the abolition of slavery, as the amelioration and
removal of the evils connected with it. Many provincial synods
dealt with the subject, at least incidentally. The legal right of
holding slaves was never called in question, and slaveholders were
in good and regular standing. Even convents held slaves."
Pope Gregory the Great, one of the most humane popes, " pre-
sented bondservants from his own estate to convents, and exerted
all his influence to recover a fugitive slave of his brother. A
reform synod of Pavia, over which Pope Benedict VIII., one of
the forerunners of Wildebrand, presided (A. D. 1018), enacted
that sons and daughters of clergymen, whether from free women
or slaves, whether from legal wives or concubines, are the prop-
erty of the church, and should never be emancipated"
Augustin held that slavery would " finally be abolished when
all iniquity should disappear and God shall be all in all." Chry-
sostom said about the same thing, deriving from the sin of
Adam a threefold servitude and threefold tyranny — that of
husband over wife, master over slave, and state over subjects.
Thomas Aquinas saw in slavery " only a scourge inflicted on
* " History of the Christian Church," vol, iv., p. 330.
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ISLAM. 123
humanity by the sin of the first man." " None of these great
men seem to have had an idea that slavery would ever disappear
from earth except with sin itself.* If a slave were ordained
without his master's consent, he could be reclaimed by his mas-
ter.f " If a freeman works on Sunday, he loses his freedom or
pays sixty solidi." X
What has preceded will serve to show the necessity for caution
when we use so indefinite a word as " Christianity," and to prepare
us to understand how Islam so largely supplanted Christianity in
the East. Briefly stated, the causes of Islam's wonderful success
amount to this : that where the first and greatest successes were
made Christianity did not exist; there was great need for an
ethical-religious reformation, and much that went by the name
of Christianity was inferior to Islam.
Arabia was pagan, and the Christianity and Judaism that bor-
dered it were not of a type that could be expected to gain many
converts. Judaism was too particularistic and Christianity too
corrupt.
For one thing, it was an age of controversy, and thus it hap-
pened that various theological dogmas, which in themselves had
little or nothing to do with religion of any sort, came to be
looked upon as the essential truths of Christianity, simply because
they were the rallying cries of the hostile sects.
The character of the Christianity which Islam supplanted may
be judged o^ by the picture of sectarian strife given in the
thirty-seventh and forty-seventh chapters of " Gibbon's Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire." The bigotry and inhumanity
displayed by the different wings of the Christian church would
disgrace a modern Fiji Islander. And this non-ethical kind of
Christianity was not confined to the barbarians from the North ;
the native-born Christians of Syria and Egypt were hardly less
violent. Excited by bigotry and the lust for power, the ecclesi-
astics forgot the teachings of Jesus in their zeal for the success
of their own branch of the church ; while with the ignorant
multitude whom the church was too busily engaged in contro-
versy to instruct, Christianity tended to become an idolatrous
worship connected with certain ceremonial performances and the
sturdy maintenance of certain quite incomprehensible dogmas.
The tumult and violence of the fifth century continued in the
sixth and seventh ; and instead of being a minister of peace, the
Christian church was itself the caldron in which the disorders of
the time were brewed.
The picture of the bishops of Alexandria wading through
• •* ScbalTs History," vol. iv., p. 335 and note,
t •• SchaiTs History," vol. Iv., p. 337 and note 2.
X " BcnafTs History," vol. iv.. p. 337, et passim. This last regulation was made in
603 at the Sixteenth Synod of Toledo.
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124 THE ARENA.
blood to the arch- episcopal throne,* shows the violence that
parodied the name of Christianity in the sixth century ; and the
conception of the trinity, as composed of God the Father, Jesus
Christ, and the Blessed Virgin, — held in some parts of the East,
— illustrates the extravagance of the Christian theology of the
day, and its tendency toward polytheism.
The association of Christianity with the empire was a source of
corruption, and a great disadvantage to its success in the border-
lands of the East. The emperor was a sort of archbishop, and,
on the other hand, the archbishops had great temporal authority.
Those who did not like the empire did not take kindly to Chris-
tianity, and, among others, the Arabs were too independent to
submit themselves willingly to the hierarchy. Islam of that day
was less despotic than seventh- century Christianity.
The situation at the time Mohammed came upon the scene is
well expressed in " Finlay's History of Greece " (p. 356) : —
A better religion than the paganism of the Arabs was felt to be
necessary in Arabia ; and at the same time, even the people of Persia,
Syria, and Egypt required something more satisfactory to their religious
feelings than the disputed doctrines which Magi, Jews, and Christians
inculcated as the most important features of their respective religions,
merely because they presented the points of greatest dissimilarity.
How was this need to be met? It is the Koran, not Moham-
med, that we are primarily studying ; but to understand the book
we are compelled to look at the life and motives of the author.
It seems useless to undertake to determine how far he believed
his message to be directly inspired by God, and how far he con-
sciously put forth his own opinion as the divine law. " The early
portions of the Qur'&n are the genuine rhapsodies of an enthusi-
ast who believed himself inspired, and Mohammed himself points
to them in the later Surahs as irrefragable proof of the divine
origin of his mission. In his later history, however, there are
evidences of that tendency to pious fraud which the profession of
a prophet necessarily involves. Although commenced in perfect
good faith, such a profession must place the enthusiast at last in
an embarrassing position, and the very desire to prove the truth
of what he himself believes may reduce him to the alternative of
resorting to a pious fraud or relinquishing all the results which
he had previously attained." f The important point for us in
this inquiry is that, " Whether he believed to the full in his divine
mission and revelations or not . . . it is certain that he did be-
lieve in himself as working for the good of his fellow-country-
man," t and, I should add, of the world. Mohammed had little
* See Milman's Gibbon, chapter xlvii., section 5, page 278 of vol. iii.
t E. H. Palmer's Introduction to the Qur'an, Sacred Books of the East, vol. vi.
p. xlvi.
t Palmer's Introduction, p. xlv.
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ISLAM. 125
or nothing of what we call education, and lie had not seen much
of the world, but he was a man of thought and feeling. When
he first began to realize the falsity of the idolatrous Arabian
religion by which he was surrounded, we do not know ; we ,may
feel confident that it was not later than when, at about the age of
twenty-five, he made the long journey of his life, with Kadijah's
caravan, to the confines of Arabia, and saw something of other
religions.
After that he doubtless saw many Jews and some Christians,
and deeply felt the superiority of their religions over the idolatry
of Arabia, while still he was far from satisfied with the narrow
particularism of the Jew or the corrupt, Mariolatrous Christianity
with which he came in contact. For some fifteen or twenty
years the serious Arab seems to have brooded in silence over the
vice and idolatry that cursed his native land before the light
began to break. At about the age of forty his first revelation
came, and several years elapsed after that before he began his
public career of prophecy.
We have seen why Christianity could not have seemed to him
the pure religion that he sought. It is a mistake to suppose that
Mohammed was merely a moral reformer ; he was of the same
mould as the Hebrew prophets of old, and like them his religious
feeling was strong. Cultivated by years of self-communion, his
religious sense took the direction the cultivated Semite's seems
always to take : he was strongly mofiotheistic. He felt that the
corrupt, image- worshipping, tritheistic Christians with whom he
came in contact were almost as greatly in need of religious reform
as his heathen countrymen ; and the result proved that he was
right. His simple unitarianism was a blessed relief to the distrac-
tion of the times. I cannot doubt that Jesus himself would have
felt a like impulse to preach a new gospel to the people that bore
his name. Indeed, in a certain sense, it seems true that Islam was
a rude revival of Christianity — a revival of Christianity that,
from its simplicity, appealed to the common people much as the
teaching of Jesus himself did when " the common people heard
him gladly." For we must remember that, false and imperfect
as was Mohammed's idea of the Christian religion, it was prob-
ably as accurate as that of the Christian populace whose land the
Moslems overran,
Mohammed was grandly true to this strict monotheism whatever
temptations beset him ; he would not buy the adherence of the
heathen clans by the least concession of divinity to their favorite
idols ; and he always insisted that he himself was but a man, God
was alone. But besides being a unitarian of the most pronounced
type, and presenting a moral teaching that was a distinct advance
on what prevailed, — while, at the same time, it was near enough
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126 THE ARENA.
akin to the thought, feeling, and custom of the country to be
possible of attainment, and so real and useful, not merely
ideal, — Mohammed was 'also a Catholic. The ethics of the
Koran was about the same as that of Judaism, — very slightly in
advance, — but the need of a religion distinct from Judaism was
the necessity of starting free from the national bias of the Jew.
I do not believe that Mohammed's launching out into the great
world with his religion was a sudden impulse arising from his
great success at home ; it was involved in his fundamental con-
ception of the universality of the religion of the one God he
was called to proclaim.
While far more ignorant of the great world outside his home
than many of the Jewish prophets, he kept that world in mind in
a grandly broad way that made him a greater man than they.
There is something wonderfully pathetic in the picture of this
unlettered Arab struggling for forty years with his great thoughts
of religious and moral reform, and at last, with the dazzling cour-
age of inspiration and ignorance, forming a code for the world
from the fragments of ethical light that had come to him from
Judaism and Christianity, the whole endowed with unity and
power by his sublime conception of the unity of God and the
universality of his care for mankind ! That the rules of conduct
his magnificent effrontery prepared for all men and all time,
should be inadequate and unsuitable for a higher state of society
than that which he knew, is not strange ; but we can hardly blame
this unlettered Arab of the simple life for undertaking to frame
a general code, when, centuries afterward, in the full light of the
highest religions, a European philosopher undertakes the same
absurd plan of prescribing for human society a complete and
permanent regulation of life ! If philosophers can honor Comte,
surely religionists may admire Mohammed and his Koran !
In what has preceded, I have striven, not only to give a fair
idea of the absolute value of the ethical precepts of the Koran,
but also to bring out the circumstances under which they were
put forth, and thus to show their relative value. I trust that it
has become evident that the criticisms commonly passed upon
it are for the most part unfounded, and that, while it is not per-
fectly consistent with itself, its general spirit is a highly moral
one — a spirit of justice, mercy, and catholicity — and admirably
adapted to elevate the lives of those for whom it was primarily
intended. So far we have chiefly considered its good points ; we
must now turn our attention to the darker side.
The Koran is greatly inferior to the Bible of Christendom and
to most other religious books in the extent to which it is polemi-
cal and controversial. Islam had to fight for its life from the
first, and far too many of the pages of the Koran are marred by
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ISLAM. 127
attacks on and abuse of individual men, parties, and tribes. In one
place we read that Abu Saheb and his wife shall broil in hell,*
and I am sorry to say that, in the tradition that explains this pas-
sage, the guilt of the lady seems to be nothing else than being the
wife of a man who had given Mohammed just cause for offence.
It is of course possible that, if the whole truth were known, we
should find that both woman and man were very wicked ; but in
the absence of such information, we are constrained to fear that
the author of the Koran allowed his personal feelings to bias his
judgment, and to creep into the sacred volume in the guise of
divine revelation. (On the other hand, we must remember that,
when we examine the Koran carefully, and find that many of the
revelations are clearly to be referred to a particular occasion,
were not intended to be of general application, and are satisfacto-
rily explained by the circumstances which brought them forth,
we have the satisfaction of learning that those which were in-
tended to be general in their application constitute a body that
makes the Koran much higher as an ethical guide than it at first
glance appears to be. It should perhaps be noted here that,
although the Koran teaches that all that it contains is inspired, it
does not teach that all is of like permanent value. The fact that
Moslems of a later day treat all texts as of equal scope and value,
proves no more than a similar misuse of New Testament texts.)
There is another particular in which the Koran stands in
marked inferiority to the Hebrew Bible, and that is its chrono-
logical anticlimax in ethics. As the books are now arranged, this
does not appear ; but as it was written, I think we must admit a
decadence. It was begun when its author was in his prime
(about forty), and cultured by such opportunities as an Arab
merchant noble might have. As it was continued, his hard and
busy life constrained him in some measure, and he became less
magnanimous. His inherited preconception for the Lextalianis
(which he early announced as the law of justice, although recom-
mending that mercy be preferred to justice) doubtless had its
influence in making him less gentle as he grew older ; and when
we consider his real reverence for the teachings of the Jewish
and Christian religions, it seems not improbable that his growing
intercourse with Jews, who in their ideas were more cruel and
intolerant than the Christians, had its influence in debasing his
thought. But most of all, the fact that he was prince as well as
prophet, had a deleterious effect upon his teaching, for the exi-
gencies of state might demand what the man would be loth
to do.
Another defect of the Koran is one that it shares with many
if not most religious books — an undue other -worldliness. It is not
• soiah oxl.
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128 THE ARENA.
very prominent in the Koran, but it exists. Among other char-
acteristics of the wicked, caring for this world is put ; and so
indifference to this world and love of the next are among the
virtues of those who are to be saved. If this was really meant,
it is unethical.
But the most serious evil connected with'the Koran, considered
as an ethical guide, is that which is inherent in any system which
attempts to lay down permanent rules of conduct of a definite
and specific. character. The very precepts which were most use-
ful in purifying and ennobling life in Arabia in the seventh
century, may become clogs upon spiritual progress when, in con-
sequence of the divine sanction, they are regarded as eternal
canons, and maintained as the highest rule of conduct for Europe
in the nineteenth century. We may believe that it was a good
thing to regulate the licentiousness of the Arab of the seventh
century, by ordaining that he should not have more than four
wives, and should confine himself to the women of his own house-
hold. And at that time and place it was a good thing to insist
that a woman had some rights which a man was bound to respect,
and that he should not divorce and take bmk a wife at pleasure
as often as he liked, and to regulate divorce by a few simple
rules, providing for the maintenance of divorcees. But it is an
evil that in the nineteenth century men should believe that the hav-
ing four wives is a divine institution, or that God is pleased by
such loose divorce laws as were sufficient to improve the domestic
life of the seventh century. It has been well said that the pres-
ervation by religion of a custom which, in the natural develop-
ment of society, has been outgrown, gives rise to immorality.
The teaching that the kingdom of God is within makes Chris-
tianity a spiritual and also an elastic religion, which is vastly
superior to the wooden ethics of the Koran. The doctrine of the
Holy Spirit makes Christianity a religion of progress, and it is in
this, not in its definite precepts, that it is immeasurably superior
to Islam.
In recapitulation it may be said that, in view of the irreligious-
ness of the Arabs and the hardness of their hearts, an ethical
code higher than the Koran would have failed to effect a practi-
cal moral reformation. The positive provisions of the Koran are
good, and, as a whole, its ethical standard is high; but by regu-
lating it has preserved certain undesirable institutions that might
otherwise have passed away in the course of hum^n progress, and
in professing to be a final revelation it has a tendency to produce
moral stagnation.
If the foregoing exposition of the origin and true nature of
Islam be correct, it follows, I think, that neither Ibu Ishak nor
Dr. Hughes is entirely right in his view. Those who have
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ISLAM. 129
learned, from the life and teaching of Jesus, that religion consists
in love to God and man, and that "the letter killeth, hut the spirit
giveth life," will never turn to Mohammed to get seventh-century
rules for nineteenth-century conduct. And on the other hand,
we may he sure that when men have learned from Mohammed
the truth that all religious teachers — even the hest and highest
— are human, and there is but one God, who governs all that is,
and is alike the God of the east and the west, the north and
the south, the Jew and the Arab, they will not forsake this simple
and catholic faith to accept as divine truth the literature of the
Jews and a mystical and metaphysical doctrine of the triune
personality of the Godhead.
If by Christianity is meant the dogmas of the church, Islam
will show itself in the future, as it has shown itself in the past,
better fitted than Christianity to convert the heathen. But if by
Christianity is meant the f/ospel of love, — the spirit of Jesus
rather than the letter of the Bible, — then will it be found true
that Islam prepares the way for Christianity !
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PARISIAN FASHIONABLE FOLLY VERSUS
AMERICAN COMMON SENSE.
BY B. O. FLOWER.
Photographed at the Rite Studio, Boston.
Haiti k C. Flower in sleeveless Grecian robe, worn over
house costume.
The system-
atic crusade
for the intro-
duction of a
rational dress
for woman,
which is being
c a r ri e d on
under the au-
spices of the
Dress Commit-
tee of the Na-
tional Council
of Women, is a
part of a far
greater conflict
which the best
thought of our
age has made
possible, and
w h i c h marks
the last quarter
of the nine-
teenth century
as the dawn-
ing time of
woman's era.
The contempt-
uous sneers of
conventional-
ism, the bitter
opposition of
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PARISIAN FASHIONABLE FOLLY.
131
ancient thought which has
antagonized every effort of
women who rebelled against
having health destroyed,
life shortened, and the un-
born cursed at the senseless
decrees of capricious and
inartistic fashion, have also
opposed every step taken
by woman toward a broader
life and a more wholesome
freedom. And just here it
may be interesting to notice
the points of difference be-
tween the old and the new
conceptions of woman's
sphere and woman's rights.
For he is a shallow thinker
indeed who fails to see that
the conflict of woman is
one of the most important
battles which the modern
progressive spirit is waging
for justice and that broader
freedom which makes for
true civilization. During
the age of chivalry, and for
many succeeding genera-
tions, the position of wo-
man was that of a drudge
or a pet. She either was
subject to her lord and mas-
ter in all things, or, being
held by ties other than those
of law, she enjoyed a degree
of independence unknown
to the wife; but this position was fatal to her moral nature.
T do not mean to imply that husbands were brutes, or that
women were slaves in the sense that they were slaves at an
earlier period in man's history. In many cases they were
happy; as, for example, the women in the family of Sir
Thomas More. But the position of woman as a class was
Photographed at the Hit: Stu<lio y Boston.
Miss Laura Lf.e In street costume.
Modified Syrian.
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132
THE AKENA.
Photographed at the Ritz Studio, Boston.
Hattie C. Floweb. Bicycle costume. Side view.
that of utter dependence on man. Practically, there were
but three gates open to her; and yet her slavery was of the
most hopeless kind, because man assumed to be her champion
and protector. He cajoled her' in song and story, and, to a
certain extent, brought her under his will by unconscious
suggestion. In a word, she came to take ideas from him,
to be the echo of his thought, to abhor what he termed
unwomanly. Then, again, and perhaps still more fatal to a
mind so long trained to be the vassal of another, stood the
authority of religion. The inspiration of the Bible was
unquestioned in conventional parlance, however much it was
disregarded in actual life. The great majority gave unquali-
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PARISIAN FASHIONABLE FOLLY.
133
fied assent to the doctrine of verbal infallibility; and on the
subject of woman and her sphere, Paul, reflecting the dom-
inant Greek thought of his time, had spoken in no uncertain
terms. Thus conservatism, custom, and religion frowned on
woman's freedom, and contested every step taken toward a
larger life. The authority of religion, labored argument,
and ridicule were thrown before
her pathway.
At length the hour came when
she began to think more deeply
upon her condition, and what it
meant to self and to posterity.
Great, vague longings rilled her
soul. It may have been more the
result of her fine intuition than
through process of pure reasoning,
but at length she came to feel that
she must have some other pathway
to tread than those then open to
her. The convent was repulsive
to young life. Wifehood, in many
instances of which she was cog-
nizant, represented a condition of
moral degradation protected by
law. This was to her fine, in-
tuitive nature only little less re-
volting than the other alternative.
She felt that her condition de-
manded broader freedom, that she
might give the world a nobler
race of men and women. She was
living in a growing world, and she
caught the spirit of the new day.
The spread of knowledge, the
changes of revolutions, and the
progress of civilization aided her.
She demanded higher education ;
and in spite of the savage opposi-
tion which declared that it would
destroy her health and tend to
destroy public morals, she suc-
ceeded. She demanded positions
I'huto. hy F.lmer Chi'ke
MlHS ClIRINTINK Hl{«»WN.
Bicycle costume. Side view.
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134
THE ARENA.
as teachers. She fought and
won the battle for admission
to medical and law schools, and
she turned ier eyes in other
directions. At every step she
met opposition, but at every
gate she won admittance. Even
marvellous as it might seem,
the door of the pulpit opened
before her.
With the broadening hori-
zon of life came the agitation
for a rational dress. As long
as woman was a toy and the
child of man's caprice, she
accepted the dictates of fash-
ion as she accepted the praise
or blame of her lord. When,
however, she became something
of an independent thinker, it
occurred to her that, instead of
being the slave of the cupidity
and caprice of man, and will-
ingly lending herself to a
bondage which flagrantly dis-
regarded art, comfort, health,
and even life, and which en-
tailed a curse upon the unborn,
it was her duty to be true to
common sense, even though it
aroused anew the scorn of con-
ventionalism. This led to the
great struggle for independ-
ence when the bloomer came in
vogue, — a garment ill chosen,
but at the time when intro-
duced it is doubtful if any radical change in costume would
have been more readily tolerated. The seeming defeat of
the early movement was simply a repetition of the story
of human progress. Before Jesus came the Voice crying in
the wilderness ; before Luther, John Huss was slain ; before
the rise of Protestantism in England, Cranmer and Latimer
Photographed by Elmer Chickeriiifj. Boston.
Miss Christine Brown.
Bievcle costume. Front view.
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PARISIAN FASHIONABLE FOLLY.
135
fell. The agitation created by the magnificent protest of
American womanhood against the degrading slavery to fash-
ion educated the best brains among the children of that day.
The succeeding years of fashionable folly only proved to
thoughtful woman the greater necessity of demanding a free-
dom in dress commensurate with the freedom she had wrested
for herself in other directions. She came more and more to see
that as long as she remained the
willing slave of fashion, she would
be at a disadvantage in every vo-
cation in life, and what was more,
until she had vindicated her moral
courage in regard to a problem
which vitally affected her health
and that of the unborn, she could
not demand the supreme right of
wife and mother which the dom-
inant sex had denied her through
the ages. Thus, again, the ques-
tion of a rational dress has come
to the front at the very moment
when the fashion combines have
decreed the return of the disgust-
ing hoop-skirt which deformed
women in the '60's.
The present crusade for ra-
tional dress is led by Lady Har-
l>erton in England, and the Dress
Committee of the National Coun-
cil of Women in America. In
Iiehalf of this new crusade such
leading thinkers and noble women
as Mi*s. May Wright Sewell, pres-
ident of the National Council
of Women, Mrs. Rachel Foster
Avery, secretary of the National
Council, Mrs. Frances E. Kus-
sell, Mrs. Annie Jenness Miller,
Mrs. Frances M. Steele, Mrs.
Frank Stuart Parker, Octavia
Bates, and scores of other prom-
inent Americans have enlisted;
Photographed by Elmer Chickering, fiat on.
Miss Lack a Lek in her ideal
costume (without 8aab).
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136
THE ARENA.
while in almost every city and town names have been sent
in to the Dress Committee carrying pledges of thoughtful
women who are ready to adopt a more rational dress than
that presented by fashion.
The dress being worn by Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery * of
Philadelphia is
known as the
modified Syr-
ian, and much
resembles Miss
Lee's street
costume given
in this paper.
This is substan-
tially the dress
advocated by
Lady Harber-
ton in England,
and Mrs. Fran-
ces E. Russell,
chairman of the
Dress Commit-
tee of the Na-
tional Council
of Women i n
America.
Many ladies
have during
the past year or
two worn gym-
nasium suits
and Syrian cos-
tumes during
,.* A photogravure of Mrs. Aver>- in her Syrian costume appears in the American
^T °/xf ,e 'T™ v ? f ,fene ";L foT . A P ril - The s* 1 ™ issu * contains an admirable
sketch of Mrs Annie Jenness Miller m her American costume, which is a short skirt
reaching slightly below the knee, with lejrgins of the same material as skirt It is an
excellent costume for those preferring skirts to trousers. Mr. Shaw also tri'ves excel-
lent pictures of Lillian Wright Dean of Indianapolis, and of Mrs. Bertha Morris Smith
in the costume which she wore at the Denver meeting of the W. C T IT These dresses
are modifications of the American costume, and are attractive, although many ladies!
who have tried both short skirts and the Syrian trousers, greatly prefer the latter as
they claim that with the skirt there is an uncomfortable feeling j n sitting lest the
skirt should work up, while with the Syrian trousers this is not present. Resides for
many women, there is a principle involved. They regard the skirt as a badjre of servi-
tude, as unfitted for active life, especially for street wear, and in business and profes-
sional life Thev do not believe in a compromise which may degenerate into the
adoption of the old dress. The war is on for a healthful freedom "and a higher morality,
and in the battle thev are not in favor of compromise. mwi»m,jr f
Photographed by Elmer Chiclering, Ronton.
Miss Laura. Lee in her ideal costume.
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PARISIAN FASHIONABLE FOLLY.
137
the morning hours in
their homes. In this
paj>er I give photograv-
ures of some rational
dresses now being worn
by some ladies in Bos-
ton.* Miss Lee, who is
a well-known young art-
ist in this city, has worn
her moniiny costume in
her studio and at home
for three years. During
the past winter she wore
the Syrian costume on
the street under a cloak
which came to the shoe-
tops. The bicycle and
street costume of Mrs.
Flower is used whenever
she bicycles and also at
times upon the street.
It is believed that ra-
tional dress clubs will
shortly be formed in the
various cities and towns
of the land, and that
in this contest common
sense and progress will
triumph over health-
destroying and inartistic
fashion, which the caprice
and cupidity of Paris has
been in the habit of forc-
ing upon America. The
time has come for true
Americans to assert their
/ /ioio'/rtij>/ifd at the Hit z Xtudio, llonton.
Miss Christine Brown in street costume.
• The costume* of Mis* Laura Lee were designed by herself. She has so
tonied herself to them, and regards them as so immensely superior to the ol<
that she is making all her new clothes after these models." The ideal costume
favorite, as conforming to the requirements of health and comfort, and ben
cumbersome than the Syrian, and also dressy. The house, street, and bicycle «••>
of Miss Brown and Mrs" Flower are much enjoyed, beiiu: perfectly comfortable.
a larite degree Ailing the requirements for a rational dress.
Mrs. Flower's house or morning costumes are very similar to Mi-*-* ( 1
Brown's street costume, and are so arranged that she ca*i remove the sa-di rim
sleeveless (Jrecian rol>e in less than a minute should occasion require. The <
also makes a graceful evening dress for home.
1 d
t'Si,
' 1>
her
nil
le^s
>-.tu
mes
. an
d in
iri>
tine
1 .1
•u a
ire
•ian
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138
THE ARENA.
independence. The superb courage and contempt for the
folly, extravagance, and waste of Europe which characterized
our republic in her early days must be revived.
True, we cannot expect that the element of our society
which is afflicted with Anglomania — the idle rich or the
unthinking devotees of frivolity — will exhibit any of the
sturdy moral
Mrs.
Photographed by Elmer Checkering, Boston.
Haiti e C. Flower in sleeveless Grecian robe.
This gives front view of Mrs. Flower's Grecian robe. It is
sleeveless, and may be slim>ed over house costume and adjusted
in less than a minute. It only requires fastening on one side
of shoulder. The house costume is similar to Miss Brown's
street costume.
vigor or com-
mon sense
which made
the infant re-
public the
wonder
glory of
world ;
when did
and
the
but
this
class favor or
in any way aid
any progres-
sive step taken
during our
nation's mag-
nificent his-
tory? They
are, through
their selfish-
ness and intel-
lectual inan-
ity, incapable
of appreciat-
ing the higher
qualities of
manhood and
womanhood,
and glory in
aping the cor-
rupt dilettan-
te ism of the old
world. But to
thoughtful
American wo-
men, who glory
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PARISIAN FASHIONABLE FOLLY.
139
in the great Republic, and who are proud of the name Ameri-
can, this movement will appeal with special force. Between
the question whether they will continue to be camp followers
in the wake of Parisian society or leaders in a movement
which appeals to common sense and is in alignment with
progress and sturdy morality, I do not believe they will falter.
The present movement is of
supreme importance to woman
in her progress toward a juster
estate and a more wholesome
freedom. Moreover, the wo-
men who are interested in this
great reform are in no sense
faddists. They are thought-
ful and far-visioned. They
see the wider bearing and
deeper significance of the
movement. They know that
victory along this line must
be accomplished before still
grander conquests can be won.
Therefore, with them, it is
largely a religion. They ex-
pect more or less of the ridi-
cule and some of the opposi-
tion which has sought to
prevent every step taken by
women in the magnificent pro-
gressive career of recent dec-
ades. They expect many wo-
men, who are merely echoes of
echoes, and others who are the
unthinking slaves of conven-
tionalism or the willing bond-
maids of fashion, to cry out
against the innovation. It will
only be a continuation of the
protest made by these classes
against the higher education
for woman and the admission of
woman to the medical profes- photograph,* by /■!,„?,> c/u^enny, /*,*/««.
. , . . i u Miss Lath a Lee.
81011, the pulpit, preSS, and bar. Morning or stinlio costume.
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140
THE ARENA.
•7V*»f ^r Hmki w.
fimt <f {f""J XV.
'893.
PREVAILING PARIS FASHION'S AT VARIOUS PERIODS.
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PARISIAN FASHIONABLE FOLLY.
141
It seems to me that to the high-minded, clear-brained, and
independent spirited American woman there would be some-
thing inexpressibly humiliating in her bondage to the fetich
of fashion, which during the past thirty years has decreed ail
kinds of grotesque styles, many of them absurd, and all
inartistic.
In the early '60's woman, regaled in fashionable attire,
rilled the sidewalk, a vast moving something, without grace,
symmetry, or beauty. In the early '70's she masquer-
aded in the Grecian bend. In the later '70's she was
compelled to wear the tie-backs, which hampered every step
and rendered free locomotion absolutely impossible. In
'86 she wore the pull-backs, and in '91 and '92 the street-
cleaners. A few years ago her sleeves were so tight that
circulation was seriously retarded ; now the sleeves are about
twice as large round as her corset-bound waist.
One thing is no-
ticeable as we trace
the vagaries of fash-
ion through the past
thirty years: Every
principle of art and
beauty has been sys-
tematically out-
raged ; the require-
ments of health have
been persistently ig-
nored ; often the
very life of the
mother and her un-
l>oin babe has been
jeopardized by the
absurd caprice of the
Parisian fashion-
maker. Moreover,
styles which have
yielded comfort, and
conformed to reason
and common sense,
have been conspicu-
ous by their absence
f$
n
t Mtfjr
Photographed at the Ritz Studio, Uoston.
Miss Laura Lke in street costume.
This costume is made of light pray serge. The
leggins are of same color.
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142
THE ARENA.
in magazines devoted
to French styles.
For generations the
woman of fashion has
been a slave to the cu-
pidity of the shrewd
and unscrupulous,
and the caprice of the
shallow and frivolous.
Now the common
sense of the leading
women in the Na-
tional Council is dis-
played in the brave
stand taken for free-
dom. It is an appro-
priate occasion. We
are approaching the
meridian of the cen-
tury of Columbus.
We are this year cele-
brating the discovery
of the New World.
And now, for the first
time in the world's
history, woman is ac-
corded the right of
demonstrating her
marvellous achievements and attainments in the manifold
fields of science, literature, art, and utility. This is an
epoch-marking year for women, and American women are
in the van. How appropriate is the time for casting aside
the bondage of fashion and adopting such attire as common
sense and the individual judgment may suggest. For shop-
ping and street wear, as well as for the bicycle, the Syrian
costume is desirable. For morning wear the Syrian or mod-
ified gymnasium costumes are eminently suitable. For even-
ing wear, what is more graceful or appropriate than a Grecian
robe ? But it is not the purpose of the friends of dress
reform to lay down any hard and fast lines as to special
styles. They demand freedom in dress in the name of
health, comfort, and common sense.
Mrs. W. D. McOrackan in Turkish costume.
This costume was worn by Mrs. McCrackan at a
ball given by the Governor of Algiers.
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PARISIAN FASHIONABLE FOLLY.
143
There is at the present time wonderful activity in the
brain of the world. It is doubtful if since the Renaissance
the thought waves of civilization have been so profoundly
agitated as to-day. On every hand is unrest, on every side
a reaching outward and upward. The heart hunger of the
present is at once the
most profoundly pa-
thetic and tremen-
dously inspiring sign
of our times. More-
over, men and women
everywhere are ad-
justing anew their
mental vision ; and
what is very signifi-
cant, woman is recog-
nized in the very van
of the new civiliza-
tion. The splendid
victories won in
her conflict for a
broader life are ai-
re a d y bearing rich
fruits. The age of
woman is dawning,
but not until she is
free from the fetters
of conventionalism
and fashion will she
rise to the dignity of
her true estate. Free-
dom along these lines
must precede a proper
recognition of the
sanctity of wifehood
and that high rever-
ence for motherhood
which will mark the
next decisive step in
humanity's advance. photographed at the mtz stwuo, nvstvn.
As long as woman hattie c. flower.
Sacrifices her health, Bicycle costume. Front view
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144
THE ARENA.
and recklessly curses
the unborn by a sla-
vish worship of fash-
ion, she cannot de-
mand and receive
that recognition of
her sacred rights
which she must de-
mand before we have
a well-born race wel-
comed into the world
amid pure and lov-
ing environment. I
repeat, the question
of freedom in dress
is of far greater sig-
nificance than a p-
pears on the surface.
It is a part of one of
the most momentous
issues which society
lias yet to confront
— a question which
must be settled be-
fore the highest mo-
rality will prevail.
Of the ultimate
outcome of the pres-
ent movement 1 have
no doubt, if those wo-
men who appreciate
its importance will
be true to their con-
victions, and evince
that moral courage
w r hich has been re-
quired by leaders and pioneers in every progressive and
reformatory step taken by humanity during her long, halting
march from savagerv toward an ideal civilization.
Photographed by Elmer Chickering, /toston.
Hattie C. Flower.
Sleeveless (Jrecian robe. Hack view.
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Cr+rf*~r-* £+mJ+~^fS**^~£*2?
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THE ARENA.
No. XLIV.
JULY, 1893.
OUR FOREIGN POLICY.
BY W. D. McCBACKAN, A. M.
It is astonishing to find how quickly internal evils vitiate
the foreign policy of a nation. Of course history teaches
this lesson plainly enough, but there is SQinetliing terribly
impressive in watching the process gradually unfold itself in
the present day, and at home.
Unless the signs are very misleading, the United States is
initiating a foreign policy which will soon reflect our worst
national characteristics.
Every special privilege within a nation creates its coun-
terpart in foreign relations. Observe the effect of that most
glaring and self-evident of special privileges — a protective
tariff. Under the plea of helping native industries, protec-
tion merely perpetuates bogus international hatreds. It
destroys the brotherhood of nations. It brings estrangements,
jealousies, imputations of evil motives, and misunderstand-
ings without end. Worse than all, war, or the fear of war,
always goes hand in hand with commercial restrictions, the
two forces reacting upon one another, and driving each other
to further absurdities or more shameless excesses.
Soldiers and custom-house officers eveiywhere act in part-
nership ; their sentry boxes stand side by side for purposes
of spoliation.
When a spirit of Jingoism has been aroused, the most ele-
mentary principles of ethics are set aside. What holds good
Copyrighted 1803, by the Arena Publishing Co. 146
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146 THE ARENA.
in the relations between persons, is declared out of place in
international intercourse. The monstrous proposition is
applauded, that it is lawful for one nation to rob another.
Prom attempting to protect a country against the imports
tion of goods, to protecting it against labor, is but a step.
First, no laborers are allowed to land who come here under
contract ; then, when that does not suffice, a whole class of
resident workingmen are marked for deportation, because
their competition becomes irksbme.
This spirit of national greed has already produced a brace
of abominations — the McKinley bill and the Geary law.
Heaven only knows to what lower depths of infamy it may
dmve us before it can be allayed !
Politicians take advantage of the popular demand to estab-
lish what they like to call a vigorous foreign policy. In our
case this means the building up of a navy. But notice the
vicious circle in which this process has moved.
By means of protective tariffs we first carefully legislated
our merchant marine from the seas. In the meantime the
treasury became burdened with a surplus, derived from this
excessive taxation. Then these same funds were used to
construct men-of-war, which have no legitimate function to
perform, because the protective tariffs which called them into
being also'swept away the merchant marine.
We already possess a fleet of fine new ships, and can hold
impressive naval parades. Of course ships must find some-
thing to do ; in fact, the more numerous they become, the
stronger does this necessity grow. They must justify their
existence. Therefore they hover about wherever a disturb-
ance arises, under the plea of protecting American interests
that either do not exist or are not threatened. In the Chilean
affair the American navy, whether intentionally or not, was
made to favor the cause of tyranny against popular rights.
Under these circumstances the attack of a mob upon our
sailors was to be expected.
But the navy must also have coaling stations. They have
become indispensable in the conduct of modern naval war-
fare. And so our government intrigues for their possession
in Hayti and Hawaii. Annexation is the next step, and an
era of conquest must inevitably follow in its wake. Another
ten or twenty years of this much-vaunted building up of the
navy, and we shall have a train of mean little wars to our
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OUR FOREIGN POLICY. 147
credit. The United States will figure as the bully of the
western hemisphere.
Another special privilege which exerts a degrading influ-
ence upon our foreign policy is the spoils system. This fills
our foreign embassies and consulates with poor material, and
exposes the country to complications. Minister Egan is an
evil product of the spoils system and of "catering to the
Irish vote," as it is called.
But there is one great special privilege which, in its
enormity, overshadows all others.
Although the United States is a vast country, its natural
opportunities are for the most part already pre-empted, or
owned, as we say. This does not mean that they are all
actually in use. On the contrary, there is every reason to
believe that our undeveloped resources are far greater than
those now being worked. It has been calculated that there
is really no necessity for any one to live west of the Missis-
sippi. But the supply of desirable free land is exhausted,
and that of cheap land so far reduced, that it can already be
manipulated by monopolizing or speculating agencies. Land
being a fixed quantity, it follows that every child born in the
United States, and every immigrant landing upon these
shores, increases the demand and enriches the land owners.
The question is one merely of supply and demand.
As soon as natural opportunities are monopolized at home,
the search for others begins abroad. Citizens of the United
States are already beginning to develop numerous enterprises
throughout the western hemisphere and in other parts of
the world. The special privilege of private property in land,
of holding natural opportunities out of use for speculative
purposes, is already driving Americans to use the resources
of other countries, long before there is any need. Americans
are founding vested interests under foreign flags; and thus a
foreign policy is born. Not only that, but some of the
principal land owners in the United States are foreign capi-
talists. They are monopolizing our natural opportunities,
enslaving our citizens under the name of tenants, and driving
others to seek their fortunes elsewhere.
Fortunately for our national reputation, the United States,
on a notable occasion, set an example to the world which
will never be forgotten. The settlement of the Alabama
Claims by international arbitration gave a wonderful moral
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148 THE ARENA.
impulse to the cause of peace. It will probably be cited by
future historians as marking the first step in the federation
of the nations. In the same way, the reference of the
Bering Sea question to arbitration is a hopeful sign.
And yet much remains to be done, if the United States
is to take the position of peacemaker, which properly belongs
to it in the western hemisphere. Pan-American Congresses
that end in spurious reciprocity treaties, will not accomplish
anything durable. Nothing but absolute freedom of trade,
an entire confidence in our disinterestedness, and an unques-
tioned equality of position will suffice to bring together the
American nations of the North, Centre, and South in the
bond of brotherhood.
That which the United States is destined to accomplish
some day for the western hemisphere, little Switzerland is
already in a measure fulfilling for the eastern.
Indeed, no more suitable country could have been found
by the Great Powers for the discussion and safe-guarding of
common interests. Switzerland lies in the centre of Europe;
she cannot be suspected of harboring desire for conquest;
her neutrality is guaranteed; her institutions are remarkably
stable; and she embraces in her federal bond the Germanic
and Latin races alike.
The movement which has resulted in making Switzerland
the repository of international arbitration was inaugurated
in 1864 by the memorable convention for the protection of
the wounded, held in Geneva. Soon after that, Bern, the
capital, was selected for the permanent administration of the
International Telegraph Union. In 1871 followed the set-
tlement of the Alabama Claims in Geneva. Gradually a
number of other central offices have been established at
Bern, such as those for the Postal Union, for the regulation
of freight transport upon the continent, and for the protec-
tion of industrial, literary, and artistic property. At present,
no less than nine international unions maintain permanent
offices in the miniature capital, and many more transact
occasional business there.
The United States is in a position to hold the banner of
peace with a firmer hand than it has ever been held before.
Our men-of-war ought, therefore, to be a cause of shame,
rather than congratulation, to ourselves. What need have
we to ape the old world in its insane armaments ?
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OUR FOREIGN POLICY. 149
The truth is, the citizens of the United States have not
kept their promises to the mother countries from which they
came. An advance has been made, it is true, on certain
lines ; but the fundamental problems are still as unsettled
here as in Europe.
We proclaimed the right of all men to an equal opportu-
nity in life — and we have allowed a plutocracy to grow up in
our midst, whose existence is maintained by special privilege,
and whose extravagances can only be likened to those of
imperial Rome. We professed to have done with the insig-
nia of aristocracies — and our cities are already full of local
titles, our women are already known as the most assiduous
tuft hunters in the courts of Europe. We promised the
individual man greater freedom than the world had yet been
able to afford — and we have deliberately deprived every
American citizen of the most elementary of liberties, the
freedom of trade. We held out the hope of rearing a state
whose foreign intercourse should be regulated by the code of
justice — and we are building armored ships, in order that we
may the more readily meddle in the affairs of our neighbors.
We might succeed, by degrees, in making ourselves mas-
ters of the western hemisphere. The task would not be so
very difficult, considering the mutual jealousies and prover-
bial instability of the southern republics. But it is just as
well to understand what that would mean. The end of such
a movement would find the United States solidified into a
military state, with an emperor at Washington; for no
republic has ever survived the test of extended foreign
conquests.
As for the rest, mere international questions are destined
to be completely dwarfed by great economic and social prob-
lems. When once the proletariat of the nations realize that
their interests are identical, irrespective of nationality, that
their common enemies are the monstrous systems of taxation,
which make it possible for plutocracies to prey upon them —
then they will no longer consent to fight against each other.
With one accord, they will turn against the evils of the mo-
nopolization of land, with its attended train of crowded slums
and farms banished into the wilderness. Protective tariffs,
subsidies, and all special privileges will then go the way of
other mediaeval survivals, passing from the files of modern
legislation into the text books of ancient history, to servo as
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150 THE ARENA.
terrible examples to the children in the schools. A few more
years of this iniquitous industrial system, and the solidarity
of the human race, so long acknowledged in vain by the best
thinkers of all ages, will be proclaimed once for all.
In that day, diplomacy, which has too long played at chess
with the nations, will become a lost art; while the monarchs
who may still be reigning when these changes take place,
will fall from their genealogical trees like over-ripe apples.
As soon as all men possess an equal right to the earth, the
greed of conquest will vanish for lack of cause. It will
then become a matter of indifference whether Alsace-Lor-
raine belongs to Germany or France, Trieste and Trentino to
Austria or Italy, Constantinople to England or Russia, and
Canada to the mother country or to the United States — for
the federation of the world will have begun.
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BIMETALLIC PARITY UNDER A GOLD
STANDARD.
BY C. VINCENT.
In the April Forum is an article by a Spanish gentleman^
Mr. Jose F. de Navarro, under the above caption, in which*
the distinguished broker has made a proposition so manifestly
unfair, and in support of his position has quoted imaginary
statistics and suppositive law to such an extent, that I
deemed it proper to seek space for a reply through the
same medium in which his letter appeared. Accordingly, I
addressed the following letter to the Forum : —
Indianapolis, Ind., April 11, 1893.
Forum Publishing Co., New York City, N. Y.
Gentlemen: I have been an interested reader of your magazine
for some time, and am now a subscriber. Having followed with great
interest the various expressions relative to the financial question, it
is only natural that I should turn at once to peruse the articles on
that subject as soon as the magazine arrives. It is extremely improb-
able that you have ever heard of me. I am only one of the millions
in this country, and have not the egotism to think that even fifteen
years of active participation in public affairs should entitle me to
recognition. I have not held, nor do I seek, an official position,
but content myself with doing what I can to promulgate those
ideas which seem to me best adapted to insure the present and
future welfare of our country. Actuated by these motives, I desire
to know whether or not a reply to the article by Mr. Jose F. de
Navarro would be accepted by you. If you desire such from me,
I will endeavor to authenticate my statements by reference to the
documents quoted, so that the lack of confidence that might spring
from my obscurity, would be in a measure compensated by the state-
ments of well-known economists and statesmen. Trusting that the
Forum may not be disposed to exclude one side of this question from
its columns, I remain, Sincerely yours, C. Vincent.
Following is the courteous reply, declining to give any
more space to this subject: —
The Forum, Union Square, New York, >
Editor's Room, April 17, 1893. }
Mr. C. Vincent, Indianapolis, Ind.
Dear Sir: I am heartily obliged to you for your kind offer to
write a reply to Mr. de Navarro's article in the last number of the
161
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152 THE ARENA.
Forum, and I should be very glad indeed to receive it, but for the
fact, that we have now given so much space to the discussion of
various aspects of the silver and coinage question, that we are obliged
to give our space henceforth to other topics.
With sincere thanks, Very truly yours, Walter H. Page.
This, in brief, is my only apology for presenting to Arena
readers, a review of what has appeared in another magazine.
In addition to the above correspondence, I addressed, on
April 4, a series of questions to the writer of the article,
with the intent to draw him out touching the authenticity of
the statistics quoted by him. He has so far preserved a dis-
creet silence, not even acknowledging the receipt of my
inquiries. Mr. de Navarro thus states his position and
plans: —
The United States legal-tender silver notes now in circulation are
payable on demand at all the sub-treasuries, either in gold or silver
coin, at the option of the government. The secretary of the treas-
ury is recommended in the act to pay them in gold as long as he
thinks it prudent, and he has always done so; but since he began, the
price of silver has been steadily going down, — from about 94 cents to
G4 cents for the standard silver dollar, — and the people realize that
the secretary will be compelled soon to pay them in silver in order to
keep the gold in the treasury. Now my remedy is simply to amend
this act of July 14, 1890, by adding that wlien paid in silver the notes
shall be paid on a gold basis, reckoning the silver at the government's
gold price on the day of payment, as fixed by a commission to be
appointed under the act.
In the perfecting of his plan the commission would be
chosen as follows: —
One to be selected by the New York Chamber of Commerce, one
by the New York Banks' Clearing House, and one by the New York
Stock Exchange, acceptable to the government, with power in the
majority; the commissioners to meet every day at the New York
sub-treasury, after business hours, to determine then and there, after
reviewing the day's transactions in silver in this and London mar-
kets, what shall be the government price for the next day for the
redemption of the silver notes, and what amount of silver shall be
purchased, if any, to replace the silver paid out in redemption of
notes.
This plan is so atrocious that it is almost passing belief
that a man could be found to advance the idea, or a reputa-
ble magazine to give it to the public. Is no person in the
United States worthy of consideration except representatives
of the three great financial guilds or combinations of New
York City ? Is the entire financial wisdom of this age found
embalmed in the conservatism of Wall Street and its coad-
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BIMETALLIC PARITY. 153
jutors, Lombard and Threadneedle Streets ? Is it wise to
provide that the financial kings, the bullion brokers, the
railroad wreckers on the Stock Exchange, the oil princes and
pork monarchs that do there congregate, may be placed in
daily communication with their associates in London at gov-
ernment expense ? Once let this policy be adopted, and
during a single congressional recess, and before means could
be provided to prevent it, this combination of all the agencies
that war against the producers of the world, would have
effectually "appropriated" everything in the treasury and
left the government hampered so that it would require many
years to recover, if indeed the country should ever be able
to overcome the baleful effects of such an administration.
As a warrant for the disingenuous proposition, Mr. de
Navarro says that the secretary is " recommended in the act "
to pay the notes in gold. Here is produced an extract from
the law, in order that the reader may not be left in the dark
on this subject. After directing the monthly purchase of
4,500,000 ounces of silver bullion, the law continues : —
And to issue in payment for such purchases of silver bullion,
treasury notes of the United States to be prepared by the secretary
of the treasury. . . .
Sec. 2. That the treasury notes issued in accordance with the
provisions of this act shall be redeemable on demand in coin at the
treasury of the Uuited States, or at the office of any assistant treas-
urer of the United States. . . . The secretary of the treasury shall,
under such regulations as he may prescribe, redeem such notes in
gold or silver coin at his discretion, it being the established policy
of the United States to maintain the two metals on a parity with
each other upon the present legal ratio or such ratio as may be pre-
scribed by law.
It is evident that the " Spanish mem1>er of the New York
Chamber of Commerce " has drawn upon his imagination for
his facts, and his wishes for his law.
I quote again from, his Forum article: —
The government has paid, from 1878 to the end of December,
1892, for silver, 8424,810,41)5, and has issued $450,529,127 of notes;
and by depreciation the value of this silver has been reduced to
$353,142,880, causing a loss of $71,667,015 to the country. The
$353,142,880 should then have been kept in the treasury permanently
as a basis of government notes. Of the 361,508,508 silver dollars
coined since 1878, only 6,454,459 were in circulation.
It appears that Mr. de Navarro has again drawn upon his
imagination for his facts; for in the "Statistical Attract "
for 1892, Table XIV., we find that since 1880 there lias never
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154 THE AftENA.
been less than 20,000,000 silver dollars in actual circu-
lation ; and for the past year 56,817,462 is the recorded
number. Further, I cannot agree with the gentleman when
he says that in the coinage of silver, and through the depre-
ciation of that metal, there has been a loss of over $71,000,-
000. There is only one condition that could occur to make
such a loss, and that is, if the government should melt
all the silver dollars into bullion and sell it at the prevailing
market price; but while it remains in the form of "dollars,"
it is impossible for the government or for any individual to
lose $7A,000,000, or any part of that sum, by any fluctuation
in the price of bullion. Mr. de Navarro adds: —
Kemember that the treasury has received a gold dollar's worth of
silver for every dollar represented by these notes, and is so receiving
now. Should circumstances compel the secretary to pay this dollar
note with a silver dollar, according to law, the government would be
actually compounding this part of its debt at 64 cents on the dollar.
The thing is so monstrous that I do not believe that any secretary of
the treasury of this government will ever pay them in silver until
all the gold in the treasury, save only that represented by gold cer-
tificates, is totally exhausted — then the law becomes mandatory.
The " Spanish member of the New York Chamber of Com-
merce " grows indignant at the idea of paying in silver a
note that was issued in the purchase of silver. His fury
amounts almost to a paroxysm of rage at the thought that it
would be possible for him not to be able to convert his silver
into gold, by the simple process of selling silver for notes,
and having the notes converted into gold in an adjacent
room. If it be permissible to say that " The treasury has
received a gold dollar's worth of silver for every dollar
represented by these notes," etc., it is also permissible to say
that the treasury has received a silver dollar's worth of silver
for every dollar represented by these notes, for the notes are
redeemable in gold or silver ; and no " recommendation " is
contained in the law to give a preference in the redemption.
If two $10 notes issued in the purchase of silver bullion are
redeemed, one with ten silver dollars, and the other with a
gold eagle, the silver dollars will pay as much of Mr. de
Navarro's hotel bill or club dues as will the gold eagle, and
no portion of the government's debt has been " compounded
at 64 cents on the dollar." It is only twenty years since the
value of the bullion in the ten silver dollars was worth 30
cents more than the bullion in a gold eagle. If, by the
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BIMETALLIC PAKITY. 155
mutability of trade, this condition should occur again in the
near future, would it be " monstrous " for the government to
continue its present practice; or would a high moral standard
require it to reverse its policy?
Scarcely had the ink dried upon the paper expressing the
Spanish gentleman's choler, when he forgot the high moral
plane which he would have us understand he occupied, and he
suggested that the government go on issuing the notes without
purchasing the bullion till it had continued at the present
rate for six years longer, or till the silver on hand amounted
to 50 cents on the dollar of the notes outstanding. This
course would soon enable the gentleman and his associates in
the three favored New York juntos above referred to, to make
a " run " on the treasury and deplete it, not only of its gold,
but also of its silver, and then compel the government to
issue or sell bonds to maintain the redemption of its paper.
Is there anything " monstrous " in such a proposition?
The next statement of this Spanish gentleman is that we
have about $34 per capita of money in the United States.
The statement is so misleading, not to say false, that no politi-
cian has ever had the effrontery to go before his friends —
excited by the enmities and sympathies of a campaign into a
mood to accept his utterances as unquestioned fact — and
claim such a per capita circulation for the United States. In
order to arrive at such a result, it would be necessary to count
all the gold (coin and bullion) and silver (coin and bullion),
as well as all the gold and silver certificates issued on the
above coin and bullion, all the greenbacks, all the national
bank notes, all the currency certificates, all the coin treasury
notes, and all the subsidiary coin both in and out of the treas-
ury. The treasury officials do not claim a circulation above
$24.44 per capita ; but here we have a reputable magazine per-
mitting the " Spanish " member of the New York Chamber of
Commerce to promulgate such false and utterly misleading
ideas, and refusing space in its columns for a reply to the
uncandid proposition. The gentleman further places the
circulation of other countries as follows (with the example
above of his statistical acumen, we should doubt his state-
ments if they were not corroborated from other sources): —
From $22 in the monometallic, ultra-conservative England (with a
clamor for more), to $39 in the bimetallic, cautious, but enterprising
Holland, and still higher to $55 in the bimetallic, industrious, and
economical France; and although not due to the volume of the cur-
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156 THE ARENA.
rency, the latter's prosperity is such that her wealth equals now that
of the United Kingdom, besides being better distributed.
Here is an admission that France, with $55 per capita, is
the most prosperous among civilized nations, though in the
same breath is a denial that the volume of the currency is
the cause of the prosperity. The gentleman should not have
left us in ignorance as to the cause of the much to be desired
prosperity. That is the thing above all others to be sought
for ; and if he is in possession of the key, he should by all
means give us the open sesame.
Before leaving this subject, let us glance briefly at some
causes that will reduce the available circulation considerably
below $24.44 per capita. The national banks hold $571,-
000,000 as a reserve fund for the security of $2,022,500,000
of deposits. (Statistical Abstract for 1892, p. 34.) The
1,059 savings banks have on hand deposits of $1,758,329,618
(Statistical Abstract, p. 41); and if only 15 per cent of this
sum is in a "reserve fund," it will be about $263,000,000,
which, added to the above national bank reserve, makes the
" reserve fund " in these two classes of banks $834,000,000,
or more than one half of the circulation as classified by the
treasury department. This statement of the reserve does
not include the amount held by the other 3,594 state and
private banks to secure the deposits of $780,927,081.
(Tribune Almanac, 1891, p. 118 ; in Money Question, p. 19.)
It thus appears that the debts of this one class alone — bank
deposits, due on demand — aggregate the appalling sum of
$4,500,000,000 ($4,561,756,699), while the entire amount of
debt-paying medium of all descriptions is only about one third
that sum ($1,601,347,187). (Statistical Abstract, p. 30.)
The estimated increase of population is 1,200,000 per
year; and if the per capita circulation is to keep pace, it will
call for an increase of $2,400,000 per month, on the basis of
the treasury estimates. Shall we depend upon the capri-
cious fortune of mining ventures to supply this demand; or,
through the combined effects of failing mines and increasing
population, shall we steadily travel the road passed by civil-
ization, from the noontide splendor of the CaBsarian period
to the Stygian blackness of the Dark Ages ? At the former
period the coin circulation was $1,800,000,000, while at the
latter it was reduced to $200,000,000 (Report of Monetary
Commission, p. 49) ; and the world emerged from the awful
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BIMETALLIC PARITY. 157
chaos of that time, only by the substitution of paper for coin
(see History of the Banks of Venice, Genoa, and Amster-
dam, in ColwelTs " Ways and Means of Payment "), and the
subsequent discovery of the mines of Mexico and Peru.
I wish here to state a fact and ask a question. In 1873,
just prior to the passage of the law demonetizing silver, the
bullion value of the silver dollar was $1.03, or silver sold at
$1.32 per ounce. If the demonetization had never taken
place, with the mints open to free coinage, would silver ever
have fallen below $1.29 per ounce? To answer this ques-
tion, let us suppose A lives across the street from the mint
at Philadelphia. He has just received, as a profit on some
mining stock, 1,000 ounces of silver bullion. Suppose the
mints are open to free coinage of silver as well as of gold.
B comes to A's place of business, desiring to purchase the
entire 1,000 ounces of bullion, and offers $1.28 an ounce.
A refuses the offer, and takes his bullion across the street to
the mint, and receives for it 1,290 silver dollars, or $1.29 per
ounce. This simple transaction shows that the cost of trans-
porting the bullion to the mint from a given point measures
the discount from $1.29 per ounce at that point. The above
question is therefore answered in the negative. In further
support of this view, permit me to quote from the " Report
of the International Monetary Conference," held at Paris
in 1878. Mr. Goschen, delegate from Great Britain, says
(p. 205): —
I have spoken against the theory of those economists who argue
that the gold standard should be everywhere introduced; I have
stated that I saw in it great inconvenience, great danger, and even
great disaster. To that opinion I decidedly adhere. I believe it
would be a misfortune for the world if a propaganda for a sole gold
standard should succeed.
The following quotations are from the body of the above
report, which is signed by all the eminent American com-
missioners, Reuben E. Fenton, William S. Groesbeck, Francis
A. Walker, and S. Dana Horton: —
We conceive that there can hardly be dissent from the proposition
that it would be both a political wrong and an economic injury of the
gravest character to adopt a monetary policy which should increase
the pressure of debts by diminishing the amount of the precious
metals in which they may be paid. With the enormous public debts
of Europe and America, amounting to not less than $20,000,000,000,
contracted at a time when silver formed an important part of the
monetary circulation, the project to reduce that metal to the rank of
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158 THE ARENA.
Token Money, allowing it to remain in Europe and America only as
small change of retail trade, and banishing the residue of the accu-
mulated stock to India and the East, is one which might well arouse
the liveliest apprehensions of public disaster (p. 207).
From so much of the second proposition (submitted by a majority
of the European delegates) as assigns as a special reason for at pres-
ent restricting the coinage of silver, " that the disturbance during
the recent years in the silver market has differently affected the
monetary situation in the various countries," they respectfully dis-
sent, believing that a policy of action would remove the disturbance
that produced these inequalities (p. 215).
In the final session of that conference, Aug. 29, 1878,
Count Rusconi, in his vigorous protest against the impotence
of the response made by the majority of the European
delegates, said (p. 165): —
1. That by the adoption of the formula proposed, the conference
does not respond to the question which was put to it, and that in
systematically avoiding to pronounce itself upon the possibility or
impossibility of a fixed relation, to be established by way of interna-
tional treaty, between coins of gold and of silver, it leaves its task
unfinished.
2. That since the French law established such a relation between
the two metals, the oscillations of their relative value had been with-
out importance, whatever had been the production of the mines,
3. That consequently, a fortiori^ if the law of France had been
alone able to accomplish the result, the day when France, England,
and the United States, by international legislation, should agree to
establish together the relation of value of the two metals, this
relation would be established upon a basis so solid as to become
unshakable.
In July, 1876, " The Society of the Netherlands for the
Promotion of Industry" presented, through its president,
A. Vrolik, an address to the king, from which I extract a
few lines (ibid., p. 187): —
The changes which have taken place in the monetary legislation
of several countries appear to us to be the principal cause of the
depreciation of silver, and a cause which is of a permanent charac-
ter. But now that the cause of the evil is ascertained, the remedy
seems to us not difficult to discover. If all civilized countries were
to reopen their mints to silver, the same result would follow which
formerly attended the increased production of gold, and the value of
silver would resume an upward tendency.
In confirmation of the opinions stated above, and which
have been likewise expressed by scores of the ablest of
statesmen on both sides of the ocean during the past thirty
years, I produce here a portion of a table taken from the
Statistical Abstract for 1892, published by authority of the
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BIMETALLIC PARITY.
159
United States Treasury Department, showing the constant
and rapid downward tendency of prices of agricultural pro-
ducts, whose cost is but little affected by the introduction
of machinery, since the date of adverse silver legislation,
" diminishing the amount of the precious metals in which
debts may be paid,"
AVERAGE
EXPORT PRICES FOR THE YEAR8 NAMED.
Is
u
s»
L
Is
i.
S3
5>s
9l
i
i.
» 1872 ....
11882 ....
Dol.
.096
.55
Dol.
1.47
1.03
Dol.
1.240
.624
Dol.
7.11
4.98
Cts.
19.3
8.7
Cts.
10.1
7.2
Cts.
19.4
16.0
Cts.
11.7
9.4
Cts.
20.3
18.0
Cts.
10.3
8.4
Cts.
80
34
> Table 269, except as noted.
* Table 239, avenge in the country, not at seaboard.
• Table 251.
The wheat crop of the United States in 1867 was 212,-
441,400 bushels, valued at $421,796,460 ; in 1892, it was
515,949,000 bushels (nearly two and a half times the pro-
duction of 1867), valued at $322,111,881 — only about
three fourths the aggregate value of the crop of 1867.
(Statistical Abstract, Table 238). It will net avail to raise
the cry of " over-production " as a cause for the low prices,
for the aggregate- crop was about the same in 1882 and
1884, while it was one-fifth larger in 1891, with an aggregate
value of over $513,000,000. Below is a statement compiled
from the Statistical Abstract Tables, as indicated: —
Aggregate
Crop.
Home
Value.
Public Debt.
Millions.
Per Cent
of Debt.
Per cent of public
debt at 2d date,
payable in crop of
tame date, with
prices of 1st date.
'Wheat .
1897
1892
212,441,400
515,949,000
$421,796,460
322411,881
•2,678
« 1/588
15.7
203
64 J)
• Com . .
»4
1887
1802
768,320,000
1,628,464,000
610,948,390
642,146,630
2,678
1,588
22^
40.4
81.9
• Potatoes
1867
1888
97,783,000
202,365,000
89,276,830
81,413/189
2,678
1,692
3.3
4£
10.8
•Hay . .
1867
1888
26,277,000
46,643,094
372364,670
408,499,565
2^78
1,692
13.9
24.2
39.1
» Tobacco.
4«
1867
1888
813,724,000
665,795,000
41,283,431
43,666,665
2,678
1,692
1.5
2.6
4.8
• Cotton .
1870
1891
3,114,592
8,652^07
303,600,000
368,863,788
2,480
1,545
12.2
23.7
54.6
• Table 238. •Table 236.
• Table 6, issue of 1885. • Table 235.
• Table 6. » Table 237.
« Table 233. • Table 176.
• Note. —The tables were not always complete for the years 1867 and 1892, but in all
cases the statistics for nearest those years are used.
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160 THE ARENA.
The above compilation from official statistics shows con-
clusively that if the policy be pursued of restricting the
debt-paying medium (coin or paper, either or both) below
the average increase of population or the demands of an
increasing commerce, one of two things will certainly fol-
low — either a wholesale confiscation of real estate and
personal property to satisfy mortgages and bonds, or a whole-
sale repudiation of these debts. One can now see clearly why
the capitalistic classes of Europe sent Ernest Seyd to this
country in 1872, with a corruption fund of $500,000, to
secure the demonetization of silver, thus " diminishing the
amount of the precious metals in which debts may be paid." *
Will the De Navarros of the creditor class, representing
less than 2 per cent of the people, continue to push their
juggernaut car over the prostrate bodies of 98 per cent of
the people ? Will the 98 per cent permit it ?
* See Congressional Globe. April 9, 1872, p. 2304 ; also the flanker's Magazine for
August, 1873, quoted on p. 40 of " Whither Are We Drifting as a Nation?" by Freeman
O. Willey ; and the affidavit of Frederick A. Luchenbach, a distinguished manufacturer
and financier of New York and Philadelphia, now residing in Denver, Col., recounting
the confession of Ernest Seyd before his death.
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EEASON AT THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF
RELIGIONS.
ILLUSTRATED BY A DISCUSSION OF SALVATION AND THE
REIGN OP LAW.
BY REV. T. E. ALLEN.
Prophets have foretold and poets sung of a time when
the spirit of brotherhood shall possess humanity as never
before since the dawn of history. In our own century great
progress has been made in the comparative study of relig-
ions. That prejudice which has inflamed the Christian with
pride as a believer in the one true and God-inspired religion
— all others being of satanic origin — is lifting like a mist, as
enlightened thinkers and scholars disseminate the results of
their studies. These leaders have found that all religions
possess some truth; that no religion demonstrably embodies
every teaching that man can ever need; and that beneath a
variety of form, which deceives many, there is revealed
substantial agreement upon some of the most vital princi-
ples, and the same deep yearning everywhere to comprehend
more of God and what he demands of his children. Such
conclusions have prepared the way for that unique spectacle,
a Congress of Religions, which is to form one of the series of
congresses connected with the Columbian Exposition.
Is there any hope for agreement between the represen-
tatives of the many faiths who will assemble at Chicago, any
one of whom may burn with a zeal not one whit less sincere
and consuming than that which will probably be manifested
by some of the Christians? Good will result if there is
nothing more tnan a frank statement of the teachings and
claims of each religion. The reverent and dignified bearing
and evident sincerity of the devotees of oriental faiths can-
not but prove a wholesome object lesson to those Christians
who, having practically forgotten that God "hath made of
161
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162 THE ARENA.
one blood all nations of men," can see no possibility of a
revelation of truth outside of the Hebrew Scriptures.
If, however, the right spirit prevails, and there is an
attempt to penetrate to the essential unity which unpreju-
diced eyes discover beneath that variety which first strikes
the casual observer, the only hope for harmony lies in the
acceptance by all of some standard by which to separate the
transient and local elements from those which are permanent
and universal. Since each will maintain the superiority
of the sacred books recognized by his own religion, this
criterion can no more be the Bible than the Koran, but can
be nothing other than reason. To show the power of this
instrument, which is held in esteem by the enlightened of
all races, in the treatment of religious problems, let us apply
it to the doctrine of salvation, a doctrine which, from the
nature of the case, is central in all faiths.
The question, "What shall I do to be saved? " is almost
as old as man. The instant there came to one of our remote
ancestors a perception of a Power outside of himself, which
must be obeyed or placated, whose favor it was useful to
have, and whose anger must be avoided, and when a convic-
tion took possession of him that in any particular manner
this Power could be made to smile upon him, that moment a
plan of salvation had its birth. So persistent and omnipres-
ent is a something in man's environment which causes him
to ask this question, that in due time it arises spontaneously
in every mind; and the great majority of the men who, in
every age, have stood aloof from the sects of their time, have
yet had — though many times unconscious of the fact —
schemes of salvation of their own.
The proper development of our theme demands that we
take the nature of the human mind as the point of depart-
ure. If we carefully reflect upon the subject, we shall find
that all human aims can be resolved ultimately into an effort
to experience certain emotional states and to avoid others.
The intuitional moralist speaks of the "approval of con-
science " and of " remorse." Why do we seek the one and
turn from the other, if not upon account of the emotional
element involved in them? We may entertain the state-
ment, " The wind blew east upon the 17th of last February,"
with complete emotional indifference, as a mere assertion of
fact, out of all vital relation, so far as we can see, not only
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THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS. 163
to our own well-being, but to that of humanity; but the mo-
ment we pass to the consideration of our own acts, we no
longer have the power to be indifferent, to cast out from the
mind the emotional component of its states. This is equally
tine where the imperativeness of the "ought" has been
removed as far as possible from the criterion of pleasure and
pain. Still, it is a certain satisfaction — an affair of the emo-
tional nature — which results from the conformity of motives
and acts to perceived moral law, that wins us to obedience.
The mistake of the intuitionalist lies in unduly separat-
ing in thought what is inseparable in fact. It is a part of the
sane order of the moral universe that, sooner or later, right
acts invariably yield satisfactory emotional states correspond-
ing thereto. The reason why, as is sometimes said, happi-
ness must not be the aim of man — and this must be inter-
preted immediate aim — is that the relation between right
acts and an emotional element contributing to happiness
being that of cause to effect, the mind must be occupied
with a consideration of what motives are right and with the
effort to work them out in conduct, since, in the end, success
in these attempts automatically yields its quota of happiness.
We find here a hint as to the manner in which evolutionary
and intuitional ethics may be reconciled.
The power of the appeal of religious teachers rests in the
claim that the emotional quality of the future life depends
upon definite conditions, a knowledge of which they can
impart to their followers. The bliss of heaven and the
agony of hell have been chiefly dwelt upon. Without defin-
ing the qualities, intensities, and combinations of emotions,
winch may be held by the most divergent theologians to con-
stitute the state of being saved, all definitions of this state
must locate it in the realm of the emotions; whence what is
true of the emotions as such must be true of these states.
If, starting with a clean slate, we ask reason to set down its
analysis of the problem of salvation, we shall find it to run
thus: It is because man is a sensitive, an emotional being,
that, stung by pain, and consoled or exalted by satisfactions,
he wills to do those things which his intellect commends as
fitted to enable him to avoid the one and obtain the other.
The motive for the will to act is strong in proportion as an
individual has confidence that the way pointed out by the
intellect will secure the end desired. If this confidence be
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164 THE ARENA.
slight, the motive will be weak and the volition feeble or
wholly lacking. There is but one thing which, inseparably
bound up in the nature of things, can furnish that confidence
which alone can stimulate the will to act, and that is an
abiding faith that all of the emotional factors which go to
make up the desired state of salvation are integral parts of a
universe dominated by law, in which the desired emotions
are effects of previous causes, which causes, in turn, the
human mind is competent to discover, and which effects it
has the power to determine by rightly-adapted acts. I have
spoken of " an abiding faith " ; it may with equal propriety
be called a postulate, which reason must lay down as
necessitated by the very conditions of the problem.
* Let us consider this point. All emotional states are phe-
nomena, and hence effects of preceding causes. If we deny
this, we cut the nerve that stimulates the will and paralyze
action ; for confidence is a belief that a certain result will
follow a proposed action. It is based primarily upon experi-
ence, but would not be thus given us without that uniformity
of nature claimed by scientists, and which is conceded by
religious leaders to govern in the material uniyerse, but is
mistakenly denied an application in the domain of theology,
to which the problem of salvation belongs. But experience
is only possible under certain conditions. Without a fixed
relationship between antecedents and consequents, static,
as in co-existences, or dynamic, as in sequences, there can
be, strictly speaking, no experience, no knowledge whatever,
or, if it be claimed that there can, it is worthless. In the
case of gold, for example, we find certain qualities always
bound up together — color, specific gravity, hardness, mallea-
bility, etc. If we assume color alone to be sufficient for
identification, so that all substance having a characteristic
color can safely be called gold, then, by hypothesis, if there
be no constant relationship between this color and the quali-
ties of the metal, one piece may sink in water while another
floats ; one may have the resisting power of steel, another* of
soap ; one may possess the malleability essential for coining,
and a thousand others may be fragile like glass. You may
say, " All characteristically yellow-colored substance is all
gold." True, but this is merely an identical proposition
which, by hypothesis, defines gold, notliing more. The infor-
mation amounts to nothing, since identification is of value
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THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS. 166
and can furnish the basis for inference solely when a fixed
relation exists between qualities; so that when one or more
are observed, we can depend upon the presence of others.
Again, every formal act of deductive reasoning requires at
least one universal premise. Unless, then, we can affirm or
deny some predicate of the whole of a subject, it is impos-
sible to form universal propositions. But this is out of the
question without that fixed relationship between qualities
already mentioned, since it is the fixedness of these relations
in things themselves that suggests and justifies that comparison
of terras which yields the propositions of logic.
What we have found to be essential in the case of co-exist-
ences, we shall find to be equally so when we turn to
sequences. If, when I grasp an iron weight and suddenly
relax my hold and jerk my hand entirely away from it, it
sometimes falls to the ground, sometimes remains suspended
in the air, and at others flies off in any one of innumerable
directions, then manifestly, unless the weight is so linked in
chains of cause Mid effect that it is possible for us to discover
the conditions under which motion in a given direction will
take place, prevision is impossible. What is true in this
case is true in all; and in so far as we deny the dominance of
the causal relation in any changes that occur in the universe,
we debar ourselves from making inferences; and with the dis-
appearance of the possibility of inference, of the reasoning
process, there would vanish the possibility of experience, of
confidence, of moral acts, and of the action of the will striv-
ing to reach ideal ends, and to attain salvation.
When in the domain of the moral and religious activities
of men, there are but two alternatives, — that they are subject
to law and that they are not subject to law, — and when the
latter assumption carries with it such destructive conse-
quences, rendering, if we but probe to the bottom, the
teachings of the thousands of ministers of our own day, nay,
of Jesus himself, as useless and inconsequent as the act of a
dog in baying the moon, — when, I say we fully realize
these consequences, we shall have no hesitation in affirming
that all acts that make or mar those emotional states, held to
constitute salvation, are governed by law. Strangely, as it
will appear to many — though, as shown above, necessarily —
the work of every minister, whatever be his sect, presupposes
the reign of law. He will tell the inquirer to believe this,
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166 THE ARENA.
do that, walk in a particular way, or follow a specified method
in order to be saved. Unless, however, he be able to say
definitely to some, " Ton are saved," he cannot make con-
verts; and the only means he has of doing this, is by satisfy-
ing himself that the devotee fulfils certain conditions, and
then, because all who fulfil those conditions are saved, he is
saved. This is the logic of all proselyting. Whether the
real conditions are known by the religious teacher, and the
judgment as to their being satisfied in a particular instance is
correct, are questions entirely distinct from the logical foun-
dation upon which his labors rest If, then, the attainment
of those emotional states which constitute being saved is
governed by law, it is thereby forever removed from the
realm of magic! But many people who renounce magic, do
not see with equal clearness that the schemes of salvation
largely current lie within this domain.
It is not an uncommon thing for an exhorter to say,
" Either Jesus was what he said he was or an impostor," thus
overlooking a number of other obvious alternatives, as, for
example, that Jesus might have been mistaken in his repre-
sentation of himself, or that his disciples may have misun-
derstood him. However much these suppositions may con-
travene received opinions, unless it can be clearly proved
that Jesus and his disciples were infallible, — which cannot
be done, — it follows that these are real alternatives which
cannot properly be neglected by one who would study the
problem to find the truth, unfettered by those fatal but often
unsuspected prepossessions which so frequently lead men
along in the deeply-worn ruts of accepted beliefs and away
from truth. Since the raw material of human nature, so to
speak, was the same in Jesus as in other men, the latter are
capable, potentially, of receiving the same influences from
the material, social, spiritual, and divine environment which
made Jesus what he was.
Now, in trade, when the merchant writes in his ledger
"John Smith, Dr., to Merchandise, $1,000," how do we inter-
pret this entry ? We say this is a memorandum of the credit
given; the credit is intended to be a temporary matter,
recording for reference and evidence, if necessary, the facts
of the case. The expectation is that the account will be
balanced at a time agreed upon by the payment of cash or
an equivalent — for the time being, the entry stands in lieu
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THE WORLD'S CONGRE8S OF RELIGIONS. 167
of cash. In somewhat the same way, authority is the substi-
tute for knowledge, for that individual realization of a fact
or truth which is supposed to reside in the person accepted
as an authority. But the judicious merchant may not con-
sent to give credit to Brown ; he may know that the latter's
resources do not justify it, or doubt his business capacity or
his representations. So, not every man is to be accepted as
an authority. The merchant knows that the buyer who is
worthy of confidence will disclose enough relative to his
affaire to justify him in granting the credit; while if there
be any doubt as to his being " good," as an established prin-
ciple, he refuses the credit or pushes his investigation far
enough to satisfy himself that the transaction is a safe one.
In a similar manner, then, those who invoke the authority of
Jesus should first test that authority. If, under a critical'
examination, it breaks down, it is shown just to that extent
not to have really been an authority, and our labors will have
yielded valuable results. On the other hand, should our
researches verify his teachings, the effect is, as it were, to
substitute cash for credit, to perform for us the signal service
of, to a greater or less extent, putting in place of the author-
ity of a man those data and influences which humanity is
capacitated to receive from its environment, thus reducing
the extent of the mediatorship of authority, and acting upon
conviction through a more intense realization, with a power
which authority, from the very nature of the mind, cannot
It will be claimed that the purpose of authority is to
supply us with reliable knowledge, where either we are
incompetent to discover the truth, or it would be incon-
venient, if not impossible, for us to find it otherwise, and
that, therefore, the proposal to test a man's authority by
putting ourselves in his place, is tantamount to abolishing
authority altogether as a factor in human life. But tin/
view is erroneous. There may be a vast difference between
both the extent and the depth of the knowledge of a man
accepted as an authority, and one who tries to judge whether
his word ought to be received or not. It is, indeed, desirable
— with certain limitations with which we are not here
concerned — to put ourselves in the place of an authority,
that we may see things as he sees them. The verification
which I contend is necessary extends, however, not to a
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complete duplication of experience, so that one can say, " I
see now that he was an authority, but as I now stand beside
him, his authority can no longer aid me," — though, as a
matter of fact, the faith which led to the attempt to verify,
did give value to the authority, — but in the realm of
religion, it lies in the application of the principles taught by
an alleged authority to all that we know, to determine
whether or not they are consistent with our fund of knowl-
edge. For example, Jesus taught the law of love, told men
to love their neighbors. Now, to verify this law, as one
calculated to lead to good results in our lives, to test it up
to the point which inspires faith in its beneficence, nay, even
to reach the conviction that it is indispensable as a means in
attaining high ends which all men will concede to be desir-
able, we have only to examine the consequences in cases
where a spirit of love has dominated in conduct, and where
it has not, to reach the conclusion that the law is true,
that love must be the animating spirit of an harmonious
society. Even if one's realization of the place and necessary
operation of the law of love is, then, less intense than Jesus
possessed, we see that it is possible to verify this teaching so
that it comes to have a new and more powerful significance.
It is a question as to whether the tendency, in view of all our
knowledge, is in the right direction.
Whatever is of abiding value in religion, and universal m
application, must be susceptible of being stated as a set of
principles. Their number is not large, and a person un-
warped by false dogmatic teachings, and not too much
swayed by his passions, will have but little difficulty in veri-
fying the more important of them, by the expenditure of a
moderate amount of time in reflection. In view of the pre-
ceding arguments going to show that the emotional elements
which pertain to the state of salvation are governed by law,
and what has just been said relative to the method of veri-
fying religious teachings, it is obvious how grossly Peter
erred when he said of Jesus (Acts iv., 12), " For there is none
other name under heaven given among men, whereby we
must be saved." After we have more carefully tested the
teachings of Jesus, and set aside, without hesitation, what-
ever seems to us false or doubtful, — perhaps to be again
sifted at future intervals, — we may rationally express our
belief that, without a recognition of the principles he taught,
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THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS. . 169
and which we have verified, and the moulding of our lives to
them, we cannot be saved — cannot enter a state of harmony.
But to hinge salvation upon the personality of Jesus, and
especially solely upon his personality, as the book of Acts re-
ports Peter as having done, can only be accomplished by an
argument which starts with a false assumption, and shuts its
eyes to the facts of man's nature, and of the universe; for
nowhere in human experience do we find instances of that
transfer of righteousness from one person to another, which
is implied in the current views of salvation.
The authority of Jesus rests upon the same principles as
that of other men in all departments of thought. Periods
in which there is an outpouring of the spirit upon the flesh
must question; questioning tears off the swaddling clothes
of infancy, and arrays the child in brighter garments which
favor freedom of movement, and a higher development. As
I interpret him, Jesus says to us : "I have placed before you
what, from my point of view, are the vital principles of indi-
vidual and social development. Fear not to test and to
apply them in all of the relations of life. If they are true,
every blow of the hammer will chip off the rust and cause
the resisting metal beneath to be more clearly seen ; if they
are false, it is best that the blows should crush them. ' The
words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are
life.' Live in my spirit, live in my principles, live in love;
and in proportion as you do these things, you shall live also
in that kingdom of harmony which is within man. * Prove
all things.' * The truth shall make you free.' "
If it be objected that the dependence advocated upon what
reason affirms to be true, substitutes a shifting for a fixed
authority, my answer is, that in strict truth there cannot be
a fixed authority; that it is inconsistent with the nature
of the human mind. Bring forward your final statement of*
religious truth uncompromised by the least admixture of
ambiguity, and prove to me that it cannot be transcended,
that what for you now is the highest reach of your reason
must be identical with the loftiest stretch of human reason!
Since, then, first, salvation is, nominally, a definable emotional
state ; second, all emotional states are governed by law ;
third, knowledge of law is knowledge of truth ; fourth,
solely by the use of reason can we discover truth; — we are
forced to admit as a conclusion that there is an inseparable
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170 THE ARENA.
relation between oar knowledge of the truth and the degree
to which we can be saved, whence he who would lead man to
salvation must preach the gospel of reason, must point him,
not alone to the truth that may happen to be in the Bible,
nor yet in the sacred books of all nations, but to every mani-
festation of God in his universe. He must promise him
blessings in proportion as he renders himself sensitive to the
impressions which he is capacitated to receive from without,
as he draws sound conclusions from all the data thus received,
and uses his will to embody these conclusions in conduct.
The recognition of the truths laid down in this essay, and
the sincere adoption of the scientific method in theology as
the only legitimate one, go a great ways towards making that
transition from ethnic to universal Christianity for which
many are looking to-day. It is to the latter to which the
term " Neo-Christianity " can wisely be applied, — albeit the
word may have been used by others in a different sense, — to a
Christianity of the spirit and not of the letter; a religion
which welcomes the new revelations of our time, rejoices in
the visions of prophetic souls, and eagerly adopts all teach-
ings certified by reason which can be shown to relate to the
welfare of humanity; it is to this that the vanguard of think-
ing Anglo-Saxons will look in the twentieth century to lead
them forward another stage towards the realization of the
kingdom of heaven upon earth.
Let us now pass beyond the bounds of Christianity, to
which our discussion has been confined. As all rivers and
streams lead at last to the one great ocean, so reason, which
has the power to lift Christians above denominational fences,
can raise Buddhist, Mohammedan, Parsee, Jew, and Chris-
tian into the higher atmosphere of universal truth. So long
as Christianity and other great religions rest upon the person-
alities of semi-divine men, just so long will there be that
strong partisanship which cries out, " Ours is the only God-
man, and we will have no other." But when, conceding to
these personalities all that can properly be demanded — and
that is; indeed, much — and, placing them in our spiritual
hierarchy according to our best estimate of their respective
merits, we yet look behind them to the nature of God, of
man, and the universe, for the verification of what we believe
to be true, then, and not till then, can there be grounds for
a reasonable expectation that the day of universal religion is
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THE WORLD'S OONGEE8S OF RELIGIONS. 171
really at hand. There has been, in the so-called " heathen "
lands, a too eager and intolerant proclamation of the superi-
ority of Jesus; the false claim that without him, as an indi-
vidual^ there is no salvation; and the lack of candid recogni-
tion of the truth other races already possessed. When the
dawn brightens into day, Occident and orient, equator and
poles will join hands in one religion, whose high priest will
be Reason, and the great doctrines of the fatherhood of God
and Brotherhood of Man will bless humanity, and unite all
peoples in one harmonious family.
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WOMEN WAGE-EAMERS : THEIR PAST, THEIR
PRESENT, AND THEIR FUTURE.
•BY HELEN CAMPBELL.
VI.
SPECIFIC EVILS AND ABUSES IN FACTOBY LIFE AND IN
GENERAL TBADES.
Has civilization civilized ? is the involuntary question, as
one by one the fearful conditions hedging about workers on
both sides of the sea, become apparent. At once, in any
specific investigation we face abuses for which the system of
production, rather than the employer, is often responsible, and
for which science has as yet found either none or but a par-
tial remedy. In England and on the Continent alike, work
and torture become synonyms, and flesh and blood the cheap-
est of all nineteenth-century products. The best factory
system swarms with problems yet unsolved. The worst, as
it may be found in many a remote district of the Continent
and even in England itself, is appalling in both daily fact
and final result. It would seem at times as if the workshop
meant only a form of preparation for the hospital, the work-
house, and the prison, since the workers therein become
inoculated with trade diseases, mutilated by trade appliances,
and corrupted by trade associates, till no healthy fibre, mental,
moral, or physical, remains.
In the nail and chain making districts of England, Sun-
days are often abolished where these furnaces flame, and such
rest as can be stolen comes on the cinder heaps. But these
workers are few compared with the myriads who must battle
with the most insidious and most potent of enemies, the
dust of modern manufacture. There is dust of heckling
flax, with an average of only fourteen years of work for the
strongest; dust of emery powder, that has been known to
destroy in a month ; dust of pottery and sand and flint, so
penetrating that the medical returns give cases of " stone "
172
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WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS. 173
for new-born babes; dust of rags foul with dirt and breed-
ing fever in the picker; dust of wools from diseased animals,
striking down the sorter. Wood, coal, flour, each has its own,
penetrating where it can never be dislodged; and a less
tangible enemy lurks in poisonous paints for flowers or wall
paper, and in white lead, the foundation of other paints,
blotching the skin of children, and ending for many in
blindness, paralysis, and hideous sores.
This is one form; and side by side with it comes another,
dealt with here and there, but as a rule ignored : vapors
as deadly as dust ; vapors of muriatic acid from pickling tins ;
of choking chlorine from bleaching-rooms ; of gas and phos-
phorus, which even now, where strongest preventives are
used, still pull away both teeth and jaws. from many a
worker in match factory; while acids used in cleaning,
bleaching powders, and many an industry where women and
children chiefly are employed, eat into hands and clothing
and make each hour a torture.
With the countless forms of machinery for stamping and
rolling and cutting and sawing, there is yet, in spite of all
the safeguards the law compels, the saying still heard in
these shops;. 4 ' it takes three fingers to make a stamper."
Carelessness often ; but where two must work together, as is
necessary in tending many of these machines, the partner's
inattention is often responsible, and mutilation comes through
no fault of one's own. Add to all these the suffering of
little children taught lacemaking at four, sewing on buttons
or picking threads far into the night, and driven through the
long hours that they may add sixpence to the week's wage,
and we have a hint of the grewsome catalogue of the human
woe born of human need and human greed.
For the United States there is a steadily lessening propor-
tion of these evils, and we shall deal chiefly with those found
in existence by the respective bureaus of labor at the time
when their investigations were made. Private and public
investigation, made before their organization, had brought to
light in Connecticut, and at many points in New England,
gross abuses both in child labor and that of women and girl
workers. It is sufficient, however, for our purpose to refer
the reader to the mention of these contained in the first
report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor, as well as to
Dr. Richard T. Ely's " History of the Labor Movement in
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174 THE ARENA.
America," and to pass at once to the facts contained in the
fifteenth report from Massachusetts.
The ventilation of factories and of workrooms in general
is one of the first points considered. Naturally, facts of this
order would be found in the testimony only of the more in-
telligent. Where factories are new and built expressly for
their own purposes, ventilation is considered, and in many is
excellent. But in smaller ones and in many industries, the
structures used were not intended for this purpose. Closely
built buildings shut off both light and air, which must come
wholly from above, thus preventing circulation, and produc-
ing an effect both depressing and wearing. The agents in a
number of cases found employees packed " like sardines in
a box "; thirty-five persons, for example, in a small attic with-
out ventilation of any kind. Some were in very low-studded
rooms, with no ventilation save from windows, causing bad
draughts and much sickness, and others in basements where
dampness was added to cold and bad air.
In many cases the nature of the trade compelled closed
windows, and no provision was made for ventilation in any
other way. In one case girls were working in " little pens
all shelved over, without sufficient light or air, windows not
being open, for fear of cooling wax thread used on sewing-
machines." *
For a large proportion of the workrooms visited or re-
ported upon was a condition ranging from dirty to filthy.
In some where men and women were employed together in
tailoring, the report reads : —
44 Their shop is filthy and unfit to work in. There are no
conveniences for women, and men and women use the same
closets, wash basins, and drinking cups, etc."f In another a
water closet in the centre of the room filled it with a sicken-
ing stench ; yet forty hands were at work here, and there
are many cases in which the location of these closets and the
neglect of proper disinfectants makes, not only workrooms,
but factories breeding-grounds of disease.
Lack of ventilation in almost all industries is the first
evil and one of the most insidious. Other points affecting
health are found in the nature of certain of the trades and
the conditions under which they must be carried on. Feather
• Fifteenth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor, p. 68.
t Fifteenth Annual Report for Massachusetts, p. 68.
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WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS. 175
sorters, fur workers, cotton sorters, all workers on any mate-
rial that gives off dust, are subject to lung and bronchial
troubles. In soap factories the girls' hands are eaten by the
caustic soda, and by the end of the day the fingers are often
raw and bleeding. In making buttons, pins, and other manu-
factures of this nature, there is always liability of getting
the fingers jammed or caught. For the first three times the
wounds are dressed without charge. After that the person
injured must pay expenses. In these and many other trades
work must be so closely watched that it brings on weakness
of the eyes, so that many girls are under treatment for this.
In bakeries the girls stand from ten to sixteen hours a
day, and break down after a short time. Boots and shoes
oblige being on the feet all day, and this is the case for
saleswomen, cash girls, and all factory workers. In type
foundries the air is always filled with a fine dust produced
by rubbing, and the girls employed have no color in their
faces. In paper-box making constant standing brings on the
same difficulties found among all workers who stand all day,
and they complain also of the poison often resulting from
the coloring matter used in making the boxes. In book-
binderies, brush manufactories, etc., the work soon breaks
down the girls.
In the clothing business the running of heavy sewing
machines by foot power is a fruitful source of disease; and
even where steam is used, the work is exhausting, and soon
produces weakness and various difficulties.
In food preparations girls who clean and pack fish get
blistered hands and fingers from the saltpetre employed by
the fishermen. Others in u working stalls," stand in cold
water all day, and have the hands in cold water; and in
laundries, confectionery establishments, etc., excessive heat
and standing in steam make workers especially liable to
throat and lung diseases, as well as those induced by
continuous standing.
Straw goods produce a fine dust, and cause a constant
hacking among the girls at work upon them ; and the acids
used in setting the colors often produce " acid sores " upon
the ends of the fingera.
In match factories, even with the usual precautions,
necrosis often attacks the worker, and the jaw is eaten away.
Sores, ulcerations, and suffering of many orders is the
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176 THE ARENA.
portion of workers in chemicals. In many cases a little
expenditure on the part of the employer would prevent this;
but unless brought up by an inspector, no precautions are
taken.
The question of seats for saleswomen comes up periodi-
cally, has been at some points legislated upon, and is, in
most stores, ignored or evaded. " The girls look better —
more as if they were ready for work," is the word of one
employer, who frankly admitted that he did not mean they
should sit; and this is the opinion acted upon by most.
Insufficient time for meals is a universal complaint; and nine
times out of ten, the conveniences provided are insufficient
for the numbers who must use them, and thus throw off
offensive and. dangerous effluvia.
It is one of the worst evils in shop life, not only for
Massachusetts, but for the entire United States, that in all
large stores, where fixed rules must necessarily be adopted,
girls are forced to ask men for permission to go to closets,
and often must run the gauntlet of men and boys. All
physicians who treat this class testify to the fact that many
become seriously diseased as the result of unwillingness to
subject themselves to this ordeal.
One of the ablest factory inspectors in this country, or
indeed in any country, Mrs. Fanny B. Ames of Boston,
reports this as one of the least regarded points, in a large
proportion of the factories and manufacturing establishments
visited, but adds that it arises often from pure ignorance and
carelessness, and is remedied as soon as attention is called to it.
Taking up the other New England reports in which
reference to these evils is found, the testimony is the same.
Law is often evaded or wholly set aside, at times through
carelessness, at others wilfully. The most exhaustive treat-
ment of this subject in all its bearings is found in the Report
of the New Jersey Bureau of Labor for 1889, the larger
portion of it being devoted to the fullest consideration of the
hygiene of occupation, the diseases peculiar to special trades,
and general sanitary conditions and methods of working, not
only in " dangerous, unhealthy, or noxious trades," but in all.
Commissioner Bishop gives many instances of working under
fearful conditions absolutely destructive to health, and often
to morals; and the report may be regarded as the most
authoritative word yet spoken in this direction.
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WOMEN WAGE-EARNEBS. 177
It is hardly necessary to go on specifying special violations
of sanitary law or special illustrative cases. The Report of
the New York Bureau of Labor for 1885 is a magazine of
such cases — a summary of all the horrors that the worst
conditions can include. Aside from the revolting pictures
of the life lived from day to day, by the workers themselves,
it gives in detail case after case of rapacity and over-reaching
on the part of the employers; and parallel ones may be found
in e^ery labor report which has touched upon the subject.
In New York a " Working Woman's Protective Union,"
formed more than twenty-five years ago, has done unceasing
work in settling disputed claims and collecting wages un-
justly withheld. No case is entered on its books which
has not been examined by their lawyer, but the records
show nearly 50,000 adjudicated since they began work.
Many cities have special committees, in the organized
charities, who seek to cover the same ground, but who find
it impossible to do all that is required. From East and
West alike, complaints are practically the same. It is not
only women in trades, but those in domestic service, who are
recorded as suffering every form of oppression and injustice.
Colorado and California, Kansas and Wisconsin speak the
same word. With varying industries wrongs vary, but the
general summary is the same.
In the matter of domestic service, even when every ad-
mission has been made as to the incompetence and insubordi-
nation that the employer must often face, the commis-
sioner for Minnesota, after stating the advantages of the
domestic servant over the general worker, adds that only
about a fifth of those who employ them are fit to deal with
any worker, injustice and oppression characterizing their
methods.
The system of fines, while on general principles often just,
has been used by unscrupulous employers to such a degree
as to bring the week's wages down a third or even half.
It is impossible to give illustrative instances in detail; but
all who deal with girls, in clubs and elsewhere, report that
the system requires modification.
On the side of the employers, and as bearing also on the
evils which are most marked among women workers, we may
quote from the Government Report, "Working Women in
Large Cities."
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178 THE ARENA.
Actual ill-treatment by employers seems to be infrequent. . . .
Foreigners are often found to be more considerate of their help than
native-born men, and the kindest proprietor in the world is a Jew of
the better class. In some shops week workers are locked out for the
half -day if late, or docked for every minute of time lost, an extra fine
being often added. Piece workers have great freedom as to hours,
and employers complain much of tardiness and absenteeism. The
mere existence of health and labor laws insures privileges formerly
unheard of ; half-holidays in summer, vacation with pay, and shorter
hours are becoming every year more frequent, better workshops
are constructed, and more comfortable accommodations are being
furnished.
This is most certainly true, but more light shows the
shadows even more clearly ; and the fact remains that every
force must be brought to bear, to remedy the evils depicted
in the reports of the bureaus quoted here.
The general conditions of working women in New York
retail stores have been reported upon within the last year by
a committee from the " Working Woman's Society," at 27
Clinton Place, New York. The report was read at a mass
meeting held at Chickering Hall, May 6, 1890, and its state-
ments represent general conditions in all the large cities of
the United States. It is impossible to give more than the
principal points of the report, but readers can obtain it on
application to the secretary of the association.* These are
as follows: —
Hours are often excessive, and employees are not paid
for over-time. Many stores give no half-holiday, and keep
open on Saturdays till ten and eleven o'clock in the even-
ing, and at the holiday season do this for three or four weeks
nightly.
Sanitary conditions are usually bad, and include bad
ventilation, unsanitary arrangements, and indifference to the
considerations of decency. Toilet arrangements in many
stores are horrible, and closets for male and female are often
side by side, with only slight partition between. One hand
basin and towel serve for all. Often water for drink can be
obtained only from the attic.
Numbers of children under age are employed for excessive
hours, and at work far beyond their strength.
Service for a number of years often meets with no con-
sideration, but is regarded as a reason for dismissal. It is
the rule in some stores to keep no one over five years, lest
• Secretary of the Working Woman's Society, 27 Clinton Place, New York.
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WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS. 179
they come to feel that they have some claim on the firm; and
when a saleswoman is dismissed from one house she finds it
almost impossible to obtain employment in another.
The wages are reduced by excessive fines, employers
placing a value upon time lost that is not given to services
rendered. The fines run from 5 to 30 cents for a few
minutes' tardiness. In some stores the fines are divided at
the end of the year between the timekeeper and the super-
intendent, and there is thus every temptation to injustice.
The report concludes : —
We find that, through low wages, long hours, unwholesome '
sanitary conditions, and the discouraging effect of excessive fines,
not only is the physical condition injured, but the tendency is to
injure the moral well being. It is simply impossible for a woman to
live without assistance on the low salary a saleswoman earns, with-
out depriving herself of real necessities.
These were the conditions which, in 1889, led to the for-
mation of the little society which, though always limited
in numbers, has done admirable and efficient work, its latest
effort being to secure from the Assembly at Albany, during
the past winter, a bill making inspection of stores and shops
as obligatory as that of factories. In spite, however, of much
agitation of all phases of woman's work, it is only some
wrong as startling as that involved in the sweating system
that seems able to arouse more than a temporary interest.
One of the most able and experienced women inspectors of
the United States Bureau of Labor, Miss de Grafenried, has
lately written : —
It is an open question whether woman's pay is not falling, cost
and standards of living considered. Could partly supported labor
and children be eliminated, shop employees would get higher rates.
Still there are other economic anomalies that affect women's wages.
44 Wholesalers "and manufacturers shut up their factories and "give
out " everything — umbrellas, coats, hair-wigs, and shrouds — to be
made — they know not in what den, or wrung they care not from what
misery. . . . Again, wages are depressed by over-stimulating piece
work, and its unscrupulous use by proprietors who hesitate to con-
fess to paying women only S3 or $4 a week, yet who scale prices so
that only experts can earn that sum. Many employers cut rates as
soon as, by desperate exertions, operatives clear $5 a week. Then,
underbidding from the unemployed is a fruitful source of low wages
Massachusetts has 20 per cent of her workers unemployed.
These conditions, while varying as to numbers, are practi-
cally the same for the work of women in all parts of the
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180 THE ABBNA.
United States, and are matters of increasing perplexity and
sorrow to every searcher into these problems. At its best,
woman's work in industries is intermittent, since it is only
textile work that continues the year round ; dress and cloak
making, shoe and umbrella making, fur sewing and millinery,
having specific seasons, in the intervals between which the
worker waits and starves, or, if too desperate, goes upon the
streets, driven there by the wretched competitive system,
the evils of which increase in direct ratio to the longing
for speedy wealth. In short, matters are at that point where
only radical change of methods can better the situation, even
the most conservative observer, relying most thoroughly upon
evolution, feeling something more than evolution must work
if justice is to have place in the present social scheme.
BEMEDIES AND SUGGESTIONS.
The student of social problems who faces the misery of
the lowest order of worker, and the sharp privation endured
by many even of the better class, is apt, in the first fever of
amazement and indignation, to feel that some instant force
must be brought to bear and justice secured, though the
heavens fall. It is this sense of the struggle of humanity
out of which have been born Utopias of every order, from the
Republic of Plato to the dream in " Looking Backward."
Not one of these can be spared; and that they exist and find
a following larger and larger, is the surest evidence of the
soul at the bottom of each. But for those who take the
question as a whole, who see how slow has been the process
of evolution, and how impossible it is to hasten one step of
the unfolding that humankind is still to know, it is the
ethical side that comes uppermost, and that first demands
consideration.
Taking the mass of the lowest order of workers at all
points, the first aim of any effort intended for their benefit
is to disentangle the individual from the mass. It is not
charity that is to do this. " Homes " of every variety open
their doors; but in all of them still lurks the suspicion of
charity, and even when this has no active formulation in the
worker's mind, there is still the underlying sense of the
essential injustice of withholding with one hand just pay,
and with the other proffering a substitute, in a charity which
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WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS. 181
is to reflect credit on the giver and demand gratitude from
the receiver. Here and there this is recognized, and within
a short time has been emphasized by a woman whose name
is associated with the work of organized charities throughout
the country — Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell. It is doubtful
if there is any woman in the country better fitted, by long
experience and almost matchless common sense, to speak
authoritatively. She writes : —
Go far from assuming that the well-to-do portion of society have
discharged all their obligations to men and God by supporting chari-
table institutions, I regard just this expenditure as one of the prime
causes of the suffering and crime that exist in our midst. ... I am
inclined, in general, to look upon what is called charity as the insult
added to the injury done to the mass of the people, by insufficient
payment for work.
Just pay, then, heads the list of remedies. The difficulty
of fixing this is necessarily enormous, nor can it come at
once ; since education for not only the employer but the pub-
lic as a whole is demanded. To bring this about is a slow
process. It is a transition period in which we live. Material
conditions, born of phenomenal material progress, have dead-
ened the sense as to what constitutes real progress; and the
working woman of to-day contends not only with visible
but invisible obstacles, the nature of which we are but just
beginning to discern. Twenty years ago, M. Paul Leroy-
Peaulieu wrote of women wage-earners: —
From the economic point of view, woman, who has next to no
material force, and whose arms are advantageously replaced by the
least machine, can have useful place and obtain a fair remuneration
only by the development of the best qualities of her intelligence. It
is the inexorable law of our civilization — the principle and formula
even of social progress — that mechanical engines are to perform every
operation of human labor which does not proceed directly from the
mind. The hand of man is each day deprived of a portion of its
original task, but this general gain is a loss for the particular, and
for the classes whose only instrument of labor is a pair of feeble
arms.
Take the fact here stated, and add to it all that is implied
in modern competitive conditions, and we see the true nature
of the task that awaits us. To do away with this competi-
tion would not accomplish the end desired. To guide it
and bring it into intelligent lines is pmt of the general educa-
tion. Profit sharing is an indispensame portion of the justice
to be done ; and this, too, implies education for both sides, and
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182 THE ARENA.
would go far toward lessening burdens. We cannot abolish
the factory, but hours can be shortened ; the labor of married
women, with young children, forbidden, as well as that of
children below a fixed age. Industrial education will pre-
vent the possibility of another generation owning so many
incompetent and untrained workers, and technical schools in
general are already raising the standard and helping to secure
the same end.
Our present methods mean waste in every direction, and
trusts and syndicates have already demonstrated how much
may be saved to the producer if intelligent combination can
be brought about. Competition can never wholly be set
aside, since within reasonable limits it is the spur of inven-
tion and a part of evolution itself. But if wise co-operation
be once adopted, the enormous friction and waste of present
methods ceases, the waste of human life as well as of
material.
How best to combine and to what ends, is the lesson taught
in every form of the new movement for organization among
women. To learn how to work together and what power lies
in combination, has been the lesson of all clubs. Among
men it has counted as one of the chief educating forces, but
for women every circumstance has fostered the distrust of
each other which belongs to all undeveloped natures. For
the lowest order of worker even, The Working Woman's
Journal, published in London and the organ of the Work-
ing Woman's Protective Union, has for the last year re-
corded, from month to month, the gradual progress of the
idea of combination, and the new hope it has brought to all
who have gone into trades unions.
With us, there Vias been equal need and equal ignorance
of all that such combinations have to give. They mean
arbitration rather than strikes, and the compelling of ignorant
and unjust employers to consider the situation from other
points of view than their own. They compel also the same
attitude from men in the same trades, who often are as strong
opponents of a better chance for their associates among
women workers in the same branches, as the most prejudiced
employer.
Six points are urged by the Working Woman's Society
of New York, all in tfll lines indicated here. Its purposes
and aims as given in the prospectus are as follows ; — -
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WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS. 183
1. To encourage women in the various trades to protect
their mutual interests by organization.
2. To use all possible means to enforce the existing laws
relating to the protection of women and children in factories
and shops, investigating all reported violations of such laws ;
also to promote, by all suitable means, further legislation in
this direction.
3. To work for the abolition of tenement-house manu-
facture, especially in the cigar and clothing trades.
4. To investigate all reported cases of cruel treatment on
the part of employers and their managers to their women and
children employees, in withholding money due, in imposing
fines, or in docking wages without sufficient reason.
5. To found a labor bureau for the purpose of facilitating
the exchanging of labor between city and country, thus
relieving the overcrowded occupations now filled by women.
6. To publish a journal in the interests of working
women.
7. To secure equal pay for both sexes for equal work.
These points are the same as those made by the few clubs
which have taken up the question of woman's work and
wages, but thus far only this society has formulated them
definitely. There is, however, stir at all points. Working
girls' clubs, friendly societies, and guilds are giving to
the worker new thoughts and new purposes. The Conven-
tion of Working Girls' Clubs held in New York in April,
1890, showed the wide-reaching influence they had attained,
and the new ideals opening before the worker. It showed
also with equal force the roused sense of responsibility
toward them, and the eager interest and desire for their
betterment in all ways. Where they themselves touched
upon their needs, there were direct statements in the same
line as many already quoted, which called for better pay,
better conditions, shorter hours, and fewer fines.
Legislation can do much. The appointment of women
inspectors, lately brought about for New York, is imperative
at all points, since women will tell women the evils they
would never mention to men. Law can also demand decent
sanitary conditions, and affix a penalty for every violation.
Beyond this, and the awakening of the public conscience as
to what is owed the honest worker, little can be said. En-
lightenmentj a better chance at every point for the struggling
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184 THE ARENA.
mass — that is the work for each and all of them, and for
those who would aid the constant demand and labor for jus-
tice in its largest sense, and its most rigorous application.
Once rendered on both sides, abuses die of pure inanition.
The tenement-house system, every abuse that hedges about
special trades, every wrong born of cupidity and igno-
rance, and all base features of trade at its worst, end once for
all, and we see the end and aim of the social life, whether
for employer or employed.
A generation ago Mazzini wrote: —
The human soul, not the body, should be the starting-point of all
our efforts, since the body without the soul is only a carcass, whilst
the soul, wherever it is found free and holy, is sure to mould for
itself such a body as its wants and vocation require.
It is this soul-moulding that is given chiefly into the
hands of women. It is through them that the higher ideal
of life, its purpose, and its demands, is to be made known.
No present scheme of general philanthropy can touch this
need. It is growth in the human soul itself, that will mean
justice from the employer to each and every worker, and
from the worker in equal measure to the employer; and this
justice can be implanted in the child as certainly as many
another virtue, into the knowledge and love of which we
grow but slowly.
Never has deeper interest followed every movement for
the understanding and bettering of conditions. Never was
there stronger ground for hope that, in spite of the worst
abuses existing, man's will is to join hands at last with
natural evolution, toward higher forms. Faith and hope
alike find their assurance in the increasing sense of the
solidarity of humankind, and the spirit of brotherhood more
and more discernible, which, as it grows, must end all
oppression, conscious and unconscious. The old days of
darkness are dying. Man knows at last that
" Laying hands on another
To coin his labor and sweat,
He goes in pawn to his victim
For eternal years in debt,"
and in knowing it, the first step is taken in the new life
wherein all are brothers; and the law of love, slowly as it
may work, ends forever the long conflict between employer
and employed.
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INNOCENCE AT THE PEICE OF IGNOEANCE.
BY RABBI SOLOMON SCHINDLEB.
A table of contents is, to the experienced reader, precisely
,the same as is a bill of fare to the gormand. The latter
will scan with a gluttonous eye the dishes advertised on the
bill, and order at once the tidbit that happens to strike his
fancy; the former, glancing over the table of contents, will
turn at once to the article which attracts him by its title.
Authors and cooks, therefore, devote a great deal of thought
to the selection of a name for their productions. A striking
title, publishers say, will sell the book; but, after all, the old
saw will keep up its reputation, that " the proof of the pud-
ding is the eating of it." It frequently happens that, induced
by a high-sounding French name, we order a dish, to be dis-
gusted when we taste of it; likewise, induced by an attrac-
tive title, we sometimes eagerly open a book, to lay it aside,
utterly disappointed. Looking over such a table of contents
in one of the magazines lately, I found the title of an article
which at once struck my fancy. The paper was written by
an able writer, — no less a person than Am^lie Rives, — and
was named, " Innocence versus Ignorance."
Having read some of the productions of this authoress, I
expected to find the subjects which the title embraced dis-
cussed in a manner that would leave no doubt as to which of
the two, " Innocence " or " Ignorance," should be preferred.
Eagerly I cut the pages; expectantly I wound through the
preliminary definitions; but though I could see that the
writer intended to say something, I found that she lacked
the courage to handle the subject. I closed the book, with a
feeling similar to that of the gormand who finds the dish
which he has ordered not palatable.
I did not feel called upon to criticise the essay, but time
and again I felt a force urging me to treat the same subjects
from my point of view. All persons who are in the habit of
writing will share with me that unpleasant sensation that
takes hold of us when once an idea strikes us like a flash of
186
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186 THE ARENA.
lightning, and pleads with us to give it expression. No
matter how long we may delay it, or how often we may
reject it, we find no rest until we have done its bidding. Let
this explanation suffice for the appearance of this article.
All persons who have a fair understanding of the language
which they speak, know that " innocence " means " free from
guilt." A person is called "innocent" who is unable, or
not expected, to do or have done harm to others. How-
ever, a different meaning attaches to the word — a meaning
which, strange to say, makes the term related to "igno-
rance." We call a person, and especially a young person,
" innocent " when he or she is ignorant of the working of
certain physical laws ; viz., the laws that govern reproduction.
In this sense, the word " innocence," and its adjective, " inno-
cent," are generally applied, and in this very sense Amflie
Rives endeavored to discuss them.
How does it happen that the idea of innocence, denoting
absence of guilt, has become connected with the idea of
ignorance, and then only when this lack of knowledge
beclouds only this one, special, physical law? We do not call
a person innocent when he does not know how many are three
times three; we do not praise him as being innocent because
he has never heard of Alexander the Great, or some other his-
torical person; and most assuredly we do not call him inno-
cent who is ignorant of the laws of magnetism or electricity.
Only when it comes to that one, great, natural force, that
wills the continuance of the species ; to the knowledge of
the laws by which this force is regulated, or to the ways in
which it manifests itself, do we demand of persons, and mind,
of young ones only, that they should be innocent, viz., ig-
norant, of it. Only then do we praise them and call them
" innocent."
Is there any guilt or any sin connected with the manifes-
tation of this force ? Are those who yield to it committing
a crime? Is marriage merely a compromise? is it the mere
choice of the lesser evil, acknowledging it a sin, that much
better were not committed, and against which the coming
generation should be guarded by being kept in utter igno-
rance of its existence ? How has it ever happened that it is
considered praiseworthy when men and women (and espe-
cially the latter) enter matrimony in utter ignorance of the
sacred duties which they have to fulfil; in utter ignorance of
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INNOCENCE AT THE PKICE OF IGNORANCE. 187
the working of that force that has attracted them and now
unites them ; in utter ignorance of the obligation which par-
enthood lays upon them ? If a man should enter a business
enterprise ignorant of the duties which he has to perform ;
if a woman were to assume the position of a cook ignorant
of how to build a fire or how to boil water, we would not
trust them, nor hire them for such an office ; but in a matter
where the whole welfare of the future is concerned, where
the prosperity of a new being called into existence is at stake,
we not only close our eyes to the incompetency of parents,
but we consider it praiseworthy that they are "innocent,"
that is, ignorant of the very acts which involve parenthood.
I can find but three reasons to account for this paradox,
which — let us acknowledge it frankly — is universal.
In the first place, this kind of ignorance is merely sup-
posed, because the knowledge of the duties of parenthood
comes to human kind by intuition, as it comes to the plant
or to the animal by instinct. If a couple were kept on a
desolate island, away from all sources through which that
knowledge could flow to them, they would still acquire it.
Nature herself reveals it to them. The need to teach what
is learned without a teacher is, therefore, not felt so much.
Secondly, the force that wills the continuance of the
species is so immense that, like a torrent, it carries people
away to excesses. Nature does not care for the individ-
ual nor for individual life, but only for the species. She
supplies with superabundance the means for the contin-
uance of the kind, while she cares little what becomes of
individuals. She creates millions, while desiring only that
thousands should live. She manifests by hunger her will
that the individual should exist ; and how great is the force
of hunger, is generally known to all. Yet a thousand
times stronger is that force which she applies to the preser-
vation of the species. You may ignore that the sexual life
exists independently from the rest of human activity ; you
may deny that it is a resistless force — but such denial will not
remove it. Why should we, ostrich-like, hide our faces in
the sand in order that we may not notice the presence of
this force ? Could we not withstand the enemy, if an enemy
it is, by facing it boldly ?
The third reason is of a more philosophical nature. Owing
to the many evils with which life is beset, pessimism has led
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188 THE ARENA.
people to believe that parents commit a kind of wrong when
they give life to children. As the evils exist only in so far
as they are experienced by sentient beings, the salvation of
the wQrld seemed within reach to some philosophers, pro-
vided propagation could, be suppressed. Self-abnegation, bor-
dering upon suicide, was made the foundation of a pious life ;
and as it was impossible to curb Nature in her attempt to
preserve the species by reproduction, the odium of sin was
at least stamped upon the act. This pessimistic philosophy,
born in India, found its way into Christianity, and thus
propagation having become synonymous with " sin," persons
who not even knew anything of it, were called " innocent."
Now, when we see that the distinction between man and
the animal consists in that the latter follows its instinct
without thought, while the former, learning from experience,
lifts himself above nature, and regulates all his actions by rea-
son; when we observe how the hypocrisy which ignores one
of the greatest forces in nature avails little, because, in fact,
all must yield to it; when, finally, we see that pessimism has
never been able to stifle the craving for life which Nature
has planted in the human species, we must come to the con-
clusion that ignoring a fact is not mattering it; or that if there
is any guilt or sin attached to an action, this cannot be
removed by withholding the knowledge of it.
First of all, we ought to understand that whatever Nature
has ordered is free from guilt; there is no more sin connected
with the act of propagation than there is with appeasing
one's hunger. Sin and guilt enter upon the stage, in both
cases, only when we go into excesses. As we have to study
the various processes through which food will go before it is
assimilated and changed into a vital force, so we ought to
learn all about the laws by which the existence of future
generations is circumscribed. If ignorance in the latter
case is called innocence, and praised as such, why should
ignorance in the former case not be laudable also ? Or vice
versa, if knowledge is demanded in one case, and ignorance
considered culpable, why should the same demand not hold
out also in the other ? That the welfare of future genera-
tions is left to chance, and that from a false shame peo-
ple hesitate to give to their children at least their own
experience, is no proof that it must remain forever so, and
that we ought never to act differently. Granted, that all
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INNOCENCE AT THE PBTCE OF IGNORANCE. 189
questions which children ignorantly ask of us cannot be
answered before they have advanced in years, and that there-
fore they must be told to wait for an answer till time will be
ripe, there is no reason why, at the time when mind and body
have reached maturity, proper instructions should not be given
to the young in regard to this most important of all the rela-
tions in which they stand to the surrounding world. Why
should we insist upon their ignorance, and falsely call it
innocence ? Why should we leave it to instinct, and let
them find out for themselves, with difficulty, what could be
told to them in a few words ?
Can the vast experience of mankind be duplicated within
the space of one individual life ? Would we expect that a
person could find out by himself, in so short a time as is his
life, all the knowledge and experience which humanity has
accumulated in the art of shipbuilding, or in any other pro-
fession ? It is because ignorance was called innocence, that
even to-day, after thousands of years of existence, mankind
has progressed but little in the knowledge of the laws that
regulate parenthood. How little we know as yet about hered-
ity — and yet enough to understand how powerful the forces
are that shape us, and how dependent we are upon them ;
enough to know that the passions that stir our souls are as
much the effects of causes as is the color of our hair or the
form of our features. We know that we have to bear all
the consequences of all the acts committed by a long line of
ancestry; and still we do not as yet know how to use these
eternal laws to advantage, simply because our experience has
ever remained individual, and has never become universal,
as was the case in other branches of science. Especially that
half of the human kind upon whom nature has laid the
strictest obligation to take care of the future, viz., the female
sex, which has more to suffer from any infringement upon
natural laws than has the male sex, is left to grope in the
dark; is thrown upon mere instinct, and kept in the darkest
ignorance as to the laws upon which depend, not only their
own welfare, but that of their offspring. They are taught a
multitude of things, and yet the greatest secrecy is kept in
regard to the most important relation into which they are to
enter. They are not trained how to take care of children,
when they shall become mothers, much to the detriment of
their progeny.
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190 THE ARENA.
Wise educators have always asked only for this one thing:
" Give us cultured and educated mothers," they have said,
" and we will give you a cultured and well-educated soci-
ety." Where, however, are these cultured and well-edu-
cated mothers to come from, if the female sex is never
to be made familiar with its mission in the world, but is
forever to be kept in ignorance of the most vital principle
of life, while this ignorance is glorified by being called
innocence? As all mothers are not able to instruct their
daughters in the various branches 6f science that are taught
in the schools, teachers are selected to do for them what their
mothers cannot do; and thus as not every mother may at pres-
ent be able to understand, and, therefore, to teach her daughter
the laws upon which motherhood is founded, why shall not
teachers of the same sex treat upon these laws as well as they
give instruction in other branches ? What is needed is that
a beginning be made. If the masses were properly instructed,
a great many vices which now prevail would go out of ex-
istence. Knowledge is light, and before light evil ever
flees. Ignorance is darkness, and befriends wickedness. I
believe that the person only could justly be called innocent
who is fully aware of all the forces against which he must
strive, and that ignorance is rather the consort of guilt. The
time must come when every couple who enter into mar-
riage relationship will be fully aware of their duties, and
fully instructed in the laws that regulate the physical part of
it. Ignorance will then not be confounded with innocence.
As to-day we praise the young woman who marries, ignorant
of her future duties, thus, in times to come, the one will
receive appreciation who has fully familiarized herself with
all the obligations appertaining to motherhood.
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THE MONET QUESTION.
BY C. J. BUELL.
Part I.
THE FAILURE OF COMMODITY MONEY.
As soon as it was found profitable for each man to devote
himself to the things he knew most about, and then exchange
his surplus with his neighbors, there arose a need for money.
How did man supply this need ?
Listen to Adam Smith : " Every prudent man must nat-
urally have endeavored to manage his affairs in such a man-
ner as to have always by him, besides the peculiar produce
of his own industry, a certain quantity of some one commod-
ity or other, such as he imagined few people would be likely
to refuse in exchange for the products of their industry."
As each man was at liberty to choose for himself, and as
experience would constantly tend to teach people what arti-
cles were best fitted for such use, in course of time, in every
tribe, one or two of the commodities with the most desirable
qualities naturally came into use as money.
Though very numerous and very diverse in their nature,
these articles were the best that could be had under the cir-
cumstances. They were either the free offerings of nature
or such things as their knowledge of the arts enabled the
people to produce readily, and range all the way from a
shingle nail to a drove of cattle : cowry shells on the coast
of Africa, and wampum among the American Indians ; coon-
skins in Tennessee, and the furs of the otter and the beaver
in the territory of the Hudson's Bay Company ; sheep and
cattle among the ancient Greeks, Romans, Saxons, Norsk,
and Germans ; horses in Tartary ; reindeer in Lapland ; dogs
among the Esquimaux ; camels and elephants in warmer cli-
mates ; wheat, barley, and oats in Europe ; maize in parts of
Central America, and tobacco among the early Virginians,
who having bought wives from some enterprising shipmas-
ters, paid for them in that weed ; olive oil along the Med-
iterranean ; cubes of pressed tea in Chinese Tartary ; codfish
191
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192 THE ARENA.
in Newfoundland ; salt in Abyssinia, and cakes of soap among
the Mexican greasers ; nails in certain Scotch villages ; little
bars of iron among the Tennessee mountains, and leaden
bullets in colonial Massachusetts, where they were in great'
demand for shooting Indians and English ; tin in England,
Rome, Syracuse, Java, Mexico, and the Straits of Malacca ;
gold dust and silver ingots, wherever those metals were found
in a natural state or could be secured by exchange.
From the above facts come the following conclusions : —
1. When civilization had begun to outgrow the system of
barter, and, as a consequence, that system had become some-
what cumbersome, then money began to come into use, work-
ing its way into general favor in a perfectly natural manner,
the same as clothing, houses, or any other article of conven-
ience. It was used before there was any law on the subject,
and is used to-day by people who have no written statutes.
Such money is therefore not a creation of law or governments.
2. All the articles that have thus naturally grown into
use as money are such as possess in themselves qualities that
would give them a more or less permanent value, and would
bring them into general demand with the people among
whom they circulated.
3. Such articles as were best fitted for this purpose were
the ones that came into most general use, thus conforming to
the law of natural selection. The fact that, among all civil-
ized people, gold and silver have come into use as money,
goes far to prove their superior fitness for such a purpose.
The loss, annoyance, and inconvenience of using these
metals in their rough state has led to their being stamped, as
a guarantee of their weight and fineness. The stamp on a
gold dollar simply says, " This piece of metal weighs twenty-
five and eight-tenths grains, nine-tenths pure gold and one-
tenth valueless alloy." Just so with those coins that have
been named silver dollars. The stamp is only a guarantee
that each one weighs four hundred and twelve and one-half
grains, nine-tenths silver, the rest alloy.
This fixing of the stamp is the only function government
can justly exercise as to the coined money of any people.
Its duty begins and ends in placing its stamp on the gold or
silver brought to its mints. In addition to this most govern-
ments assume to " regulate " the value of coins. With just
as much reason they might attempt to regulate the path of
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THE MONEY QUESTION. 193
the earth around the sun, or pass an act ordering a transit
of Venus.
The truth is that the natural value of gold or silver is a
matter wholly independent of parliaments or congresses. A
body of legislators may declare that sixteen ounces of silver
shall be worth the same as one ounce of gold, but such an
act can have no more effect than the pope's bull against the
cornet. Gold and silver, like all other products of human
labor, are subject to fluctuations in value. Suppose that
to-day a pound of gold is worth just sixteen times as much
as a pound of silver. Suppose new mines are discovered
to-morrow, and the amount of gold produced is thereby
greatly increased, is it not plain that a pound of gold will
not now be worth sixteen pounds of silver, but only thirteen,
or perhaps ten or less ? Is it not plain that, if new discov-
eries of mines or improvements in the arts should enable a
ton of gold to be produced with the same labor required to
put out a ton of pig iron, the gold would be worth no more
than the iron ?
The same is true of silver. That both gold and silver
have fluctuated enormously in value, is a fact well known to
students of the currency question. I desire to especially
emphasize this truth, because there are many people who are
positively certain that in gold and silver, or in gold alone,
nature has provided mankind with a standard of value that
is absolutely perfect, that never fluctuates or changes by the
value of the fractional part of nothing. Says Professor
Jevons : " There is abundant evidence to prove that the real
value of gold has undergone extensive changes. Between
1789 and 1809 it fell forty-six per cent. From 1809 to 1849
it rose again by one hundred and forty-five per cent, render-
ing government annuities and all fixed payments extending
over this period almost two and one-half times as valuable as
they were in 1809." ("Money and the Mechanism of
Exchange," p. 325.)
What an engine for robbing debtors to benefit creditors !
From 1849 to about 1872 Professor Jevons shows that gold
fell in value at least twenty per cent, and David A. Wells
assures us that during the past twenty years the value of
gold has increased steadily about two per cent a year, by so
much impoverishing all debtors and enriching all creditors.
All these changes have come about through the discovery of
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194 *HE AREKA.
new mines, which caused gold to fall in value, or through
increase in the demand for gold, which caused a rise. All,
except the rise of gold, since 1872 were not much, if at all
due to legislation. The late demonetization of silver by
many nations, and the consequent increase in the demand
for gold as a basis of currency, has had much to do with the
recent rise in the value of that metal.
What a wonderfully perfect standard of value gold is, to
be sure ! Think of a yardstick, three feet long in 1789,
shrunk to nineteen and one-half inches in 1809, stretched
again to four feet in 1849, reduced in 1872 to thirty-eight and
oneJialf inches, and now four feet three and nine-tenths inches
long, and growing longer every day ! Would not that be a
remarkably safe thing to measure cloth with ? And yet we
are to-day measuring our debts and credits by a standard no
more perfect. Selfish creditors will strenuously insist on
maintaining the single gold standard, for by that means they
are rapidly growing richer. Foolish debtors will clamor for
free coinage, hoping thereby to get cheaper money with which
to pay their debts.
These bad results are inherent in any system of currency
based upon such an unstable foundation as gold and silver or
any other product of human labor whose value is always
changing and must ever continue to change. Of course all
those evils that are inherent in gold and silver, or any other
commodity money, also attach to paper money based upon
those commodities, except that the paper is lighter and easier
to carry.
If the demonetization of silver was a piece of criminal
impudence on the part of Congress, the present policy of
buying four and one-half millions of ounces monthly to pile
up in vaults, utterly useless to all the world, can only be
characterized as monumental stupidity.
A lot of paternalistic congressmen, urged on by the cred-
itor class, feeling themselves far above the people whose ser-
vants they are, decide that silver shall no longer be coined.
Then, at the instance of the silver-mine owners, a future
congress concludes to buy up a part of their product and
store it in vaults. They afterward increase the amount they
will buy, and thus extend further favors to the mine owners,
who are now demanding that the people buy their entire
output, no matter how large it may become.
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THE MONEY QUESTION. 195
All this vividly illustrates the rapid descent of a people
when once they start on the downward path of paternalism.
And now come the farmers with their sub-treasury and
land-loan schemes, asking that the parental government take
them in out of the cold and grant them similar favors.
And why is it not just as reasonable to buy up wheat and
corn and salt pork, and issue certificates against them, as to
purchase gold and silver for that purpose ?
Whither are we drifting? How long before millers,
bakers, and ironmongers, house builders and manufacturers
of all kinds, and all the infinite crowd of wealth producers
will be flocking to Washington and demanding the same
privileges?
The whole thing is utterly absurd, and would be a roaring
farce, were it not for the tragedy inevitably linked with it.
No, no I the currency question can never be solved in any
such senseless manner. We are off the track. Let us back
up, take our common sense on board, and make a new start.
Part II.
COMMON-SENSE PAPER MONEY.
Just as the cumbersome system of barter, forced by the
needs of an advancing civilization, had to give way to com-
modity money and its paper representatives, so now a further
advance in human progress makes a still better currency not
only possible but necessary. Barter had its day and served
its useful purpose ; commodity money arose, developed, and
greatly helped mankind ; but it is destined to disappear and
give place to a system as much superior to itself as it was
better than barter.
The road out of our present difficulty and into a better
system is neither crooked nor obscure, but opens wide and
plain before us.
Let us get down to the root of the thing.
Society, through its choseh agents, performs certain ser-
vices for the people.
For those services the people pay taxes into the public
treasury. Thus we see that the people's agent, the govern-
ment, is constantly purchasing materials and services from
individual citizens, and paying for them out of the taxes it
has collected from all the people.
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196 THE ARENA.
The revenue thus collected from the people amounts to
something more than seven hundred millions of dollars per
year, about one half going into the national treasury and the
remainder covering state and local taxes.
If national revenue amounts to three hundred and fifty
million dollars per annum,. then that amount can be paid out
yearly for national purposes.
We do not need to consider here whether this vast sum is
raised in an equitable manner or not, nor whether the work
done by our servants in Washington is worth what it costs.
The fact remains that the United States government has a
steady and regular revenue of about that sum annually to
draw against.
Now, it is plain that if my banker owed me ten thousand
dollars per year, I could draw checks on him to that amount,
and he would be glad to honor them. It is also plain that I
would not need a dollar's worth of gold or silver, nor of any
other valuable thing stowed away anywhere on account of
these checks I had issued. So long as I did not draw on
him for more than he owed me, he would be satisfied. These
checks, when returned to me, would be evidence that he had
paid me what he owed me. I could either destroy them and
issue new ones against his next year's indebtedness to me, or
I could re-issue the same ones, as I had need to collect from
him what he owed me the next year/
The parallel is complete. For the services rendered by
the national government, to pay pensions and provide for the
national debt, the people owe, let us say, three hundred and
fifty million dollars annually. Is it not plain that the simple
and easy thing to do is to draw on the people for materials
and services as they are needed for public purposes, and issue,
to those from whom the services or materials are received,
checks or certificates, bearing upon their face the amount of
the value received ? Those certificates, returned to govern-
ment in payment of taxes, would complete the exchange and
show that the services rendered by government had been
paid for.
Knowing that such certificates had never been issued in
excess of the revenues due to government, and knowing that
they could always be used in paying those dues, they would
freely pass current anywhere within the limits of the nation
as the simplest and most convenient money possible. The
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THE MONEY QUESTION. 197
only precaution necessary is that these certificates be never
issued except for services rendered or materials furnished,
and that government never purchase services or materials in
excess of its revenue.
Such a currency, issued in suitable size and shape, and of
convenient denominations, would possess all the essential
characteristics of good money. It is not heavy to carry
about, can be made to represent the smallest sums or the
largest amounts, and, properly engraved, is easy to recognize
and difficult to counterfeit; it is infinitely safer than any
form of bank notes, for it would always be received by the
goverment at its face value. As our needed revenue is very
regular and constant in amount, increasing steadily with the
growth of population and the consequent public needs, there
would be no danger from inflation or contraction ; but the
volume would be perfectly self-regulative. If population
increased, the duties of government would increase propor-
tionately, the needed revenue would keep equal pace, and
the volume of currency would follow step by step the in-
crease of population and the consequent need for more
money. If population remain stationary, government dues
and the volume of currency will do the same ; while if the
people diminish in number, the needed revenue grows less
proportionately, and so .will the amount of money in circula-
tion. With all these changes, the number of dollars per
capita would remain substantially constant.
In stability of value this is a more perfect medium of ex-
change than any other ever used. Gold and silver and all
other commodity money must necessarily fluctuate in value
with every change in the art of producing the substance out
of which it is made. All paper money based on commodi-
ties must share the same fluctuations, while bank notes pos-
sess the additional objection that their value always depends
largely upon the soundness of the bank, upon the honesty of
the officials, the wisdom of their management, and their
financial ability to meet obligations.
True, the currency proposed, like all paper currency, has
no value in itself, but it is based upon a value the most
steady and permanent imaginable — the value of the ser-
vices and materials due from the people to government in
exchange for the services of government to the people.
But some one may inquire, " Where do you get your
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198 THE ARENA.
measure of value to start with ? " A very pertinent ques-
tion, but very easily answered, if only we bear in mind the
origin and essence of value. What is the measure of the
value of a piece of gold or silver or apple pie ? What is
the measure of value of a yard of cloth or a ton of hay ?
Evidently the value of any one of these articles is always
relative, and depends entirely on what people are willing to
give in exchange for it. How much woollen cloth, for in-
stance, will exchange for an ounce of silver ? Plainly, an
amount of cloth that requires for its production, on the
average and under normal conditions, an amount of human
energy equal to that required to produce the ounce of silver.
So the value of any article is always measured by the
amount of labor, on the average, that is required under nor-
mal conditions to produce that article. This is the explana-
tion of value given by Ricardo and generally accepted by
economists.
Now remember that each one of these proposed govern-
ment certificates would show on its face the average amount
of labor or material for which it was issued, and remember,
further, that every bit of material purchased by government
would have a value equal to the average amount of labor
required to reproduce it ; and we see that our proposed cur-
rency is based upon and measured by the very source of all
value — human labor, expended under normal conditions in
the production of useful things.
I repeat, then, that the value of such money would neces-
sarily be the most stable and permanent possible, infinitely
more so than any money based upon gold or silver or any
other single article whose value is sure to fluctuate from year
to year, from month to month, or even from day to day ; and
that its volume would be perfectly self-regulative, following
step by step the advance or decline of public revenue de-
manded by an advancing or declining population.
The material out of which such money should be made is
a matter of small concern. Depending in no respect upon
the material for its value, all large denominations, say from
dollars up, could be made of paper, the same as our present
bank notes and greenbacks ; while for small change, paper
notes are very convenient to send through the mails, though
metallic coins are better to carry in the pocket.
One more point needs brief consideration. Even if states
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THE MONEY QUESTION. 199
and counties, municipalities and townships, were to issue
such currency up to the amount of their yearly revenue, — and
I see no serious objection to such issues, and many reasons
in favor of it, — even then the total volume of such issues
could not equal much more than half the present ostensible
circulation in the country. But we must bear in mind that
much of the so-called volume of our present currency is not
really in circulation. All the gold and silver lying in vaults
against which certificates have been issued, all the cash in
the national treasury and all other treasuries, the average
amount of all deposits in various institutions — these are not
in circulation, and are in no way performing the function of
a medium of exchange.
Then there is no inconsistency between the money pro-
posed and any other sort now in use. It would seem wise,
however, as our government bonds are paid off, and the basis
of our present bank-note circulation thereby narrowed, to
resort to this proposed currency rather than hunt around for
some substitute that may be used to perpetuate the existence
of institutions of such doubtful merit as our national banks.
So, too, we might profitably displace the large and increasing
volume of gold and silver certificates, which, though con-
venient to use, are about the most expensive money that
could possibly be thought of. Eveiy dollar's worth of gold
or silver stored away in vaults as a basis for a paper currency
is just so much of those valuable metals withdrawn from
useful purposes, by just so much their supply is diminished,
and consequently the price enhanced to every user the wide
world over. Not only this, but our stupid policy of hoarding
up gold and silver is a sort of special favoritism to the
owners of gold and silver mines, who could probably manage
to worry along and support their families under conditions
of equal rights to all and special privileges to none. And
this leads me to a thought in conclusion, that no reform of
our currency system, however much needed or far reaching
or logical or just, can be of any permanent benefit so long
as we allow to remain on our statute books those class laws
that are constantly operating to concentrate the money and
the wealth of the nation into the hands of a few, while the
masses are deprived of their earnings and driven daily
deeper . into poverty, vice, and crime. There are other
reforms infinitely more important than to remedy the evihj
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200 THE ARENA.
of our present currency system, great and important as those
evils undoubtedly are. Establish equality of opportunity to
produce wealth from the earth, abolish the present monopoly
in our great iron highways, restore to man his natural right
to exchange the products of his labor freely with his brother
men the wide world over, wipe out our present fiendish
system of crooked taxation that robs the farmer and laborer,
while it lets the rich land speculators go free, and establish a
system that will never tax an industrious citizen more for
making land useful than a useless speculator is taxed for
holding equally valuable land idle, and we have gone far
toward bringing about conditions that will distribute the
money of the country, be that money good or bad, honest or
otherwise, with a fair degree of equity among the people.
Restore to men their natural rights that class legislation has
taken from* them, and they will soon settle the question of
the equitable distribution of the money and the wealth of
the nation.
1> ote. — If our existing greenback currency were made receivable for all dues to
government, import duties included, and if interest on tbe public debt were made
payable in greenbacks, we should have a paper money exactly like tbat proposed in
this paper. Tbe volume of tbat currency could then be increased, not to exceed tbe
amount of the annual national revenue, and it would be a perfectly safe and stable
currency. The hundred million in gold now held to *« redeem " the greenbacks, could
be applied to the payment of the national debt, or to any other useful purpose. It
could never be needed to •• redeem " the greenback. That would be redeemed In taxes.
This currency would be safer than our present national bank notes. Bank notes are
based on bonds. What are the bonds based on ? Why, nothing but tbe power of the
government to draw from the people in taxes the wealth to redeem the bonds. Why
not base the currency directly on the taxing power, and save the expense of the inter-
est on the bonds, and tbe profits on the bank notes ?
Just so paper money issued by each state, based on the taxing power of the state,
would be simpler, cheaper, and safer than any state bank issues could possibly be. It
is never necessary nor desirable that tbe issuing of a currency should be given over to
a bank.
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CHRIST AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM.
BY GEORGE G. BROWN.
I was reared by Christian parents, who taught me of one
Jesus, the Christ, who had been crucified that all human
beings, without reference to sex, nativity, or vocation, who
believed on him, should be saved. But I have been in the
wholesale whiskey business for more than twenty-two years;
and if I accept as true the denunciations made against all
engaged in my business by a large organization of men and
women who assert their superior piety, and style themselves
Prohibitionists, I must be a person wholly given over to evil,
and entirely without moral guidance. The Prohibitionists,
under the guise of morality, have banded themselves together
for the expressed purpose of suppressing the manufacture and
sale of alcoholic stimulants, at any cost to our civil and re-
ligious rights, or at any financial loss to those engaged in
the manufacture and sale of alcohol.
As the Methodist church is most active in fostering this
movement, I incorporate herewith something the northern
branch of that church has to say on the subject in its Book
of Discipline issued in 1892 : " We reiterate the language
of the Episcopal address in 1888: 'The liquor traffic is so
pernicious in all its bearings, so inimical to the interests of
honest trade, so repugnant to the moral sense, so injurious
to the peace and order of society, so hurtful to the home, to
the church, and to the body politic, and so utterly antag-
onistic to all that is precious in life, that the only proper
attitude toward it for Christians is that of relentless hos-
tility. It can never be legalized without sin.' "
If all of the above is true, there is no question but that
the liquor traffic should be crushed, even though in doing
so every man engaged in the business should be destroyed
with it. I shall only at present discuss one point of the ful-
mination of the Methodist church on the subject, — as to
whether the liquor traffic can be legalized without sin. The
first question to determine is, What is sin? Is it doing
901
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202 THE AKENA.
what any particular society of men prohibits, or failing to
do what they require? If that is sin, then one may be a
sinner if a member of one society, and a saint if a member
of another. One society may prohibit its members from eat-
ing onions, pastry, or meat, and another may require the
eating of these as a condition of membership. Therefore, if
we are to leave it to every organization of human beings to
determine what is and what is not sin, without any fixed
and reliable authority for its conclusions, we certainly put
ourselves into a very unsatisfactory position. But what is
sin ? I prefer to accept the orthodox and very well estab-
lished definition: Sin is any want of conformity unto or
transgression of the law of God. Therefore, unto the law
of God do I appeal to determine whether the Methodist
church or any other organization is correct in asserting that
the liquor traffic can never be legalized without sin.
" And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, And the meat
offering thereof shall be two-tenth deals of fine flour mingled
with oil, an offering made by fire unto the Lord for a sweet
savour ; and the drink offering thereof shall be of wine, the
fourth part of an hin." Lev. xxiii. 13.
Again, " The priests' portion shall be all the best of the
oil, and all the best of the wine, and of the wheat, the first
fruits of them which they shall offer unto the Lord, them
have I given thee." Num. xviii. 12.
" In the holy place shalt thou cause the strong wine to be
poured unto the Lord for a drink offering." Num. xxviii. 7.
" And thou shalt eat before the Lord thy God in the place
which He shall choose to place His name there, the tithe of
thy corn, of thy wine, and of thine oil, and the firstlings of
thy herds, and of thy flocks; thatUhou mayest learn to fear
the Lord thy God always. And if the way be too long for
thee, so that thou art not able to carry it, or if the place be
too far from thee, which the Lord thy God shall choose to
set His name there, when the Lord thy God hath blessed thee,
then shalt thou turn it into money and bind up the money in
thine hand, and shalt go unto the place which the Lord thy
God shall choose, and thou shalt bestow that money for
whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or
for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul
desireth, and thou shalt eat before the Lord thy God, and thou
shalt rejoice, thou and thine household," Deut. xiv. 23-26,
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CHRIST AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. 203
" He (God) causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and
herb for the service of man, that he may bring forth food out
of the earth ; and urine that maketh glad the heart of man,
and oil to make his face to shine, and bread, which strength-
ened man's heart." Ps. civ. 14-15.
From these passages it is clear that God's chosen people
were required, under the old dispensation, to offer wine as a
sweet savour unto the Lord, and it is estimated that hun-
dreds of thousands of gallons were annually consumed in
this way. They were also required to contribute wine for
the use of the priests, and to drink it themselves as an ex-
pression of gratitude to God for his numberless blessings ;
and if it suited their convenience better to sell their wine at
home, and buy wine or strong drink at the place selected by
the Lord for their gathering and worship, they were com-
manded to do so.
God also asserts that He is the giver of wine with which
to gladden the heart of man, and with which man's heart is
gladdened to this day, and which he can drink as much to the
glory of God as he can eat meat and bread to His glory.
Therefore the question is, Did these people commit sin in
doing what the Lord positively commanded they should do ?
If we take the position of the Methodist church, they must
have sinned ; for they not only bought but sold an intoxicant
— the same character of alcohol on which Noah and Nabal
became drunken. Or has there been a new revelation from
God on which Prohibitionists base the doctrine of prohibi-
tion, and which they have been able to keep from the
knowledge of any outside of their own followers?
In visiting the Mormon Temple at Salt Lake about twenty
years ago, I remember seeing on the pulpit platform large
casks of pure water that attracted my attention ; and on in-
quiring of the sexton, who was my guide, why they were
there, I was informed they used it for communion purposes
instead of wine, in compliance with a special revelation
Brigham Young had received from the Lord to substitute
water for wine for this purpose, until he should receive fur-
ther orders. If the Prohibitionists have received a similar
special revelation, changing God's revealed will as contained
in the Scriptures, it would certainly be but Christian charity
for them to give their fellow-men the benefit of it.
Ag^io referring to t)ie Northern Methodist Book of Disci-
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204 THE ABENA.
pline, I quote, under the head of " Imprudent and Unchristian
Conduct," p. 240 : " In cases of neglect of duties of any kind,
imprudent conduct, indulgent, sinful tempers or words, the
buying, selling, or using intoxicating liquors as a beverage,
signing petitions in favor of granting license for the sale of
intoxicating liquors, becoming bondsmen for persons engaged
in such traffic, renting property as a place in or on which to
manufacture or sell intoxicating liquors, dancing, playing at
games of chance, attending theatres, horse races, circuses,
dancing parties, or patronizing dancing schools, or taking such
other amusements as are obviously of misleading and ques-
tionable moral tendency, or disobedience to the order and dis-
cipline of the church, first, let private reproof be given by
the pastor or leader; and if there be any acknowledgment
of the fault, and proper humiliation, the person may be borne
with. On a second offence, the pastor may take one or two
discreet members of the church. On a third offence let him
be brought to trial; and if found guilty and there be no sign
of real humiliation, he shall be expelled."
In contrast to the above, with reference to the use of
alcohol, I refer the reader to what the Lord said of Himself,
— "For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor
drinking wine, and ye say he hath a devil ; the son of man
is come eating and drinking, and ye say, behold a glutton-
ous man, and a wine bibber, a friend of publicans and
sinners." Luke vii. 33, 34. Also see John ii. 1-10.
From this it is evident that Christ used, as was customary
among his friends, an intoxicating liquor as a beverage; and
if he were to come again upon the earth in human form,
and to live exactly as he did when here, the Methodist
Church would have to change its Book of Discipline, in
order to admit him to membership therein, as certainly, from
its present position, he would not be moral enough to
become a member of such an association.
It is unfortunate, for the cause of true Christianity, that
the false position taken by the Methodist Church on the
subject of alcohol has been adopted by many other church
organizations, so that such societies, to be honest and logi-
cal, would have to deny membership to almost, if not quite
all the prophets, priests, and kings under the old dispensa-
tion, and to the Lord himself under the new. The exclu-
sion of all dealers in alcohol is a very small part of the
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CHRIST AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. 205
result of such fanaticism, which proclaims to the world that
the Bible is not a safe guide to determine questions of mo-
rality, and rationalists and infidels are multiplying under
such teaching.
The evil results from the abuse of intoxicants are perfectly
plain to every reasoning mind, and I rejoice that the Lord,
in His holy word, has condemned, not only the abuse of
alcoholic stimulants, but the abuse of every blessing which
He has bestowed upon man ; but because the abuse is con-
demned does not argue that its proper use is not commended,
for admitting the former to carry with it a prohibition of
the latter, we have clear inconsistencies in the Bible, and
•could not accept it as the revealed will of God, and the only
infallible rule of faith and practice.
If the Prohibitionists want to prohibit everything that has
evil in it, let them be consistent and not stop at alcohol,
but go a little further and include the human tongue, of
which the Bible says : " The tongue can no man tame. It
is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison ; therewith bless we
God, even the Father, and therewith curse we men made
after the similitude of God." James iii. 8, 9. Here is evil
and good combined in the same thing, just owing to whether
it is properly or improperly used, and the same assertion is
equally true of alcohol; although the Prohibitionists seem
unwilling to admit there is anything but evil in it, notwith-
standing the Lord's assertion to the contrary. Again, there
is another great evil mentioned in the Bible that seems to
have escaped the attention of these so-called moral reformers:
44 But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare,
and into many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in
destruction and perdition, for the love of money is the root
of all evil." 1 Tim. vi. 9, 10.
There is certainly no such denunciation against alcohol in
the Bible as the foregoing, and the Prohibitionists certainly
do not claim that it is a sin to have money, but interpret the
passage referred to in its proper light, as being a denuncia-
tion of those who crave money for the power it gives them,
and worship it rather than their Creator.
They can see the good and evil in money, why not in
alcohol?
The evil in the abuse of alcohol shows itself probably
more promptly, plainly, and disgustingly than anything else,
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206 THE ARENA.
and hence has arrayed against it many honest and intelligent
sentimentalists, who, if they have given the subject any
investigation at all, have done it in a superficial way. How-
ever, it will not do to determine questions involving right
and morals by sentimental views ; otherwise we might con-
demn the Lord for cruelty when He made so great a test of
Abraham's faith by commanding him to slay and offer his
son Isaac on the altar, or when He commanded that all the
men, women, and even innocent children, except Rahab and
her few friends, should be put to death in Jericho.
If we accept the inspiration of the Bible, we must in sin-
cerity acknowledge that " God is infinite, eternal, and un-
changeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice,
goodness, and truth," and therefore it is not within our
province to criticise Him for having created us free agents,
and empowered us by our own actions to make His greatest
blessings our greatest curses.
The Prohibitionists seem to have lost sight altogether of
the Lord's plan in creating man, which has been so beauti-
fully expressed by Milton : —
" I made him just and right, sufficient to have stood, though free to
fall.
Freely, they stood who stood, and fell who fell —
Such I created all the ethereal powers and spirits,
Both them who stobd and them who failed.
Not free, what proof could they have given sincere of true allegiance,
constant faith or love,
Where only what they needs must do appears, not what they would —
What praise could they receive?
What pleasure I from such obedience paid?
Clearly, u without free agency there can be no morality,"
and " without temptation no virtue," and it is not consistent
with the laws of Providence that because some abuse an arti-
cle which is good in itself, the vast multitude should, in con-
sequence, be denied its use. This would be punishing the
innocent many for the sins of the guilty few.
The Prohibitionists pronounce alcohol an unmitigated
evil, and must torture the imagination in order to picture to
their own satisfaction the depravity of those who engage in
its manufacture and sale. While discussing the moral as-
pects of this question, and having shown conclusively from
the Bible that there is no sin in the temperate use of alcohol,
and hence can be none in buying and selling it, it may
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CHRIST AND THE LtQTTOR PROBLEM. 207
seem superfluous to offer some prominent authorities, certi-
fying to its value ; but as so much is said in denunciation of
it, I think it but fair to quote from a few leading physicians
in its favor.
As England is certainly one of the most civilized countries
in the world, and most nearly allied to us in social and re-
ligious habits, and, being older than our own country, has
had opportunity to consider the subject of the use and
abuse of alcohol possibly better than we in America, I quote
from some prominent English authorities : —
DR. JAMES RISDON BENNETT.
44 In the vast majority of cases where alcohol does good,
we don't know how it acts. Some men may be rendered
feverish, irritable, peevish, and quarrelsome by a small quan-
tity of wine, which will soothe the irritated nerves of
another, and make him contented and amiable. The stom-
ach of one man is irritated and offended by wine, and his
digestion impeded, while the appetite of another is improved,
and his digestion facilitated. The former is unquestionably
better without alcohol, and he comes under the category of
fools if he takes it; but the latter has no claim to the char-
acter of a physician, if he abstains at the bidding of either
a mistaken fanatic or a theorist."
DR. C. B. RATCLIFFE.
" Alcohol, properly used, is of great service, partly in
keeping up the animal heat by supplying easily kindled
fuel to the respiratory fire, partly by producing nerve power,
by furnishing easily assimilable food to nerve tissues, and
partly in lessening the necessity for ordinary food^ by dimin-
ishing the waste of the system^ which has to be repaired by
food.
44 All my own experience in hospital and private practice
teaches rae that drunkenness, or even a tendency to drunk-
enness, is the exception, and not the rule. Every blessing
of life may be made a curse to him who abuses it.
44 Alcohol, when properly used, is what it is abundantly
proved to be, a natural and very potent means of comfort.
Nor should I be disposed to speak differently if I were deal-
ing with those who transgress the bounds of moderation, in
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208 THE ARENA.
making use of this means of comfort, for I hold that a very
great number of those unhappy persons have erred — not be-
cause they have liked too well what they have taken too
freely, but because their feelings of habitual discomfort have
been intolerable. And for this reason I should try to re-
claim them, not by holding forth on the necessity of total
abstinence from intoxicating drinks, but by teaching them
to use wisely, what, after all, may be almost a necessity of
life to them."
DR. JOSEPH KIDD.
"In the experience of my own life — fragile in constitu-
tion, the seventeenth child of a worn-out mother, pushed
early into hard struggles for life — I lived nearly a total ab-
stainer until thirty years of age. Weakness increasing upon
me, languor and unfitness for work, I adopted a new regime
of three glasses of good Bordeaux or of hock for dinner. As
I did so my working power increased, all my delicacy van-
ished, boils ceased, and for the past twenty-five years, in
good health, I have worked as hard as most men, and never
changed my regimen, still limiting myself to three glasses of
good wine once a day."
DR. BRUDENELL CARTER.
" Nothing is more certain than that people will live upon
alcohol and water for long periods. While I fully admit,
therefore, that there are many who can support vigorous life
without alcohol, I nevertheless affirm, alike from my own
experience and that of others, that there are some — I do not
pretend to say how many — to whom it is a necessity, if they
are to exert the full measure of their powers. Perhaps the
most remarkable testimony ever borne to its usefulness is
that of a distinguished ophthalmic surgeon, Dr. Gustave
Braun of Moscow, who, a few years ago, was accustomed to
lose no less than forty-five per cent of the eyes on which he
operated for cataract in his hospital — that is to say, among
badly nourished Russian peasants. He was not singular in
this experience, for his colleague, Dr. Rosander, was equally
unfortunate. At length, after trying many experiments, in-
cluding the use of quinine and other tonic remedies, Dr.
Braun administered a dose of brandy or of sherry to every
patient immediately after operation, and repeated it twice a
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CHRIST AND THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. 209
day for two or three days. The result of this plan was to
reduce the number of cases in which the eye was totally lost,
from forty-five to six per cent, with an additional three per
cent of imperfect recoveries. Nothing was altered in the
mode of operating, or in the other treatment, and Dr. Braun
asserts that the improvement was attributable to alcohol
alone."
DR. A. L. GARROD.
44 The use of alcoholic beverages in some form, as malt
liquors, wines, or distilled spirits, is so universally diffused
among European nations and their offshoots, and is of so
great antiquity, that a natural hesitation arises, to prevent
our coming to the conclusion that, taken in moderate quanti-
ties, they are prejudicial to health.
44 The same holds good with regard to alcohol ; there are
some few who cannot take it without discomfort, and, of
course, for such ppople total abstinence is most desirable.
Passing over these exceptional instances, it will be found
tliat by far the greater number can partake moderately of
alcohol, not only without any injurious consequence arising
from it, but with positive benefit ; and as it is a source of
much enjoyment, and much discomfort often springs from
its discontinuance, it is difficult to say why it should be dis-
continued under ordinary circumstances. It is of course well
known that there are many nations that thrive without alco-
holic drinks; nations, for example, professing the Mohamme-
dan faith, and to whom alcohol is forbidden by their
religion ; but on further inquiry it will be found that among
them the use of the stronger narcotics, such as opium and In-
dian hemp, is extremely common, and the exchange from alco-
hol to these narcotics can hardly be looked upon as a gain. As
yet there are no trustworthy statistics to show that the absti-
nence from the moderate use of alcohol is attended with
unusual length of life or improvement to health."
FROM THE 44 BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL," LONDON.
44 The report of the collective investigation committee of
the British Medical Association, on the subject of 4 Temper-
ance and Health,' and the results embodied in it, are both
interesting and important.
44 A schedule of inquiries was forwarded to all members of
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210 THE ABENA.
the British Medical Association, one hundred and seventy-
eight of whom responded, and gave in the aggregate particu-
lars regarding four thousand two hundred and thirty-four
cases of deceased lives, aged twenty-five and upward, in
which the alcoholic habits of the lives were recorded. For
the purposes of the investigation, the habits of the deceased
with reference to alcohol were divided into five classes,
namely : (a) total abstainers ; (b) habitually temperate ; (c)
careless drinkers ; (d) free drinkers ; (e) decidedly intemper-
ate. The ages of death of those in each class were reg-
istered, together with the causes of death ; and the average
of death for each class is given in the following schedule : —
Total abstainers
51.22 years.
Habitually temperate.
62.13 "
Careless drinkers ....
69.67 u
Free drinkers
67.59 "
Decidedly intemperate .
52.03 "
As a dealer in intoxicants, I am intensely interested in the
suppression of drunkenness, as I consider the drunkard the
greatest enemy to our business, and one for whose sins and
crimes we innocently suffer, in the good opinion of the unin-
vestigating public. While drunkenness will continue until
the millennium comes, much can be done to minimize it.
First, let our children be reared without trying to deceive
them about alcohol ; but let them know that they can get
both good and evil from it, as from many or all other things,
and that they are individually responsible for its abuse.
Again, let those who preach prohibition from the pulpit, cease
their efforts to poison public sentiment about the use of alco-
hol, and have the moral courage to teach what they find in
the Bible - — discouraging, as does the Bible, only its intem-
perate use.
Let public sentiment encourage honest and conscientious
men, who regard the laws of God and man, to engage in the
sale of alcohol, particularly at retail. Educate public senti-
ment to the true relation the drunkard occupies to society,
and the consensus of the opinion of that society will be more
potent than any other agency in preventing intemperance,
and will sufficiently punish him who transgresses.
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THE REALISTIC TREND OF MODERN GERMAN
LITERATURE.
BY DR. EMIL BLUM.
Twenty years ago the German, as a people, commanded
little respect in foreign countries ; they held no important
position in the council of nations, and were not believed to
be fit to play a first violin in the world's political concert.
Disunited at home, they could neither physically nor mor-
ally enforce their rights abroad, and therefore they were not
taken in consideration by the great powers.
In America the German was little known, although the
emigration from Germany was larger than that from any
other country. The reason for such lack of knowledge was —
partly, that the majority of German emigrants came from the
less educated classes ; partly, that those who were not con-
versant with the complicated political relations of Europe
registered Bohemians, Poles, Hungarians, and Slavonians
under the same heading, " German." The American had but
one designation for all of them; he called them "Dutchmen."
The reconstruction of the German Empire in 1870-71, which
made out of the thirty-six principalities a nation of forty-
five millions, drew the eyes of the world upon it as a politi-
cal power of first magnitude, and it was but a short time
before the customs, habits, literature, art, and music of
that people became matters of great interest. As regards
America, we may add that, owing partly to the Germans,
who had prospered upon her soil, and partly to the greater
facilities of travel, visitors from the United States who
formerly had made England, France, Switzerland, and
Italy the aim of their excursions, now extended them to
Germany. Many began to study the German language, and
even sent their children to Germany to finish their education,
inasmuch as the great victories of 1866 and 1870 had been
attributed more to the success of the expert German school-
master than to the needle-gun and the Krupp canon.
211
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212 THE ARENA.
While, however, German scholars had familiarized them-
selves, gradually and during a long time, with English and
American literature, Englishmen and Americans could not
all at once acquaint themselves with all the German writers,
now that the desire for studying them had been pushed so
strongly into the foreground. They stopped, therefore, with
the study of a few old luminaries such as Goethe, Schiller,
Lessing, Heine, and a few newer writers such as Auerbach,
Scheffel, Ebers or — last and least — Marlitt and her kind.
It could hardly be expected that the latest productions of
German genius should have found their way already to
America, or could have received the attention and appreciar
tion due to them ; nor is it astonishing that Americans,
both natives and of German descent, should have remained
ignorant of the fact that a complete revolution has taken
place in the minds of the German nation, of which the mod-
ern literature is the proof and outcome. While, on the one
hand, they were cognizant of the changes that had occurred
in English and also in French literature, while they are
wide awake to the transition from idealism to realism
therein, they are, on the other hand, hardly aware that a
similar process has revolutionized German literature, and that
the trend of it has been in the direction of a realistic con-
ception of all the social, political, and moral conditions of life.
If there is any doubt regarding this statement, let the
observer mingle among the masses. Let him go among the
laborers and hear what they say, let him listen to the con-
versation of business men in the caftSs, let him pay attention
to the debates of students in their clubs, let him frequent
theatres and watch what delights the audiences most or what
criticisms the newspapers make next day, and he will find
himself confronted on all sides by realism.
Now, every common-sense reader knows that the literary
men of the nation are not able to form or to change the ideas
of the people, be it in politics, religion, or art. Quite to the
contrary, the dramas, novels, poems, magazine articles, and
the daily press expose merely the thoughts and wishes of
the people.
Literature is the gauge which shows outwardly the degree
to which the waters of intelligence have risen or fallen in
the boiler of the nation. It may be possible, occasionaDy,
for another one or another writer to succeed in creating
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MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE. 213
temporarily a local movement in some direction contrary to
a majority ; but great revolutions never pass over from the
individual to the masses. Rousseau and Voltaire did not
bring about the French Revolution; Koerner, Kleist, and
Rueckert did not kindle the war of 1813 ; and TurgenefTs
prose songs did not abolish serfdom in Russia. They and
numerous others were merely the exponents of the people;
they merely set the fuse to the powder that had been
accumulated by the masses.
Every change in the sentiments of the people reflects
itself in a corresponding change in literature. From the
"Nibelungenlied" to Conrad Alberti's "Plebs," from the
songs of the minstrels to Mackay's anarchistic firebrands,
we behold in German literature all the various states through
which the mind of the nation has travelled.
Germany had waded for centuries in blood. It had fought
in turn for religion as well as for increase of power, for
abolition of class distinction as well as for recognition among
the nations ; and within the last century it has shed the
blood of thousands of its best sons for a constitutional
government, and for the unification of the whole nation.
Corresponding German literature gives us a perfect picture
of this struggle; and as the years 1813 and 1848 had their
representatives in Koerner, Kleist, Rueckert, Arndt, and
Herwegh, so had the year 1870 its representatives in Dahn,
Hammerling, and others.
Yet although the German nation had been apparently
successful in carrying out its political destiny, all the blood
had been spilled in vain, because all their victories had not
changed the conditions of life or the welfare of the individ-
ual for the better. The conviction pressed itself, therefore,
upon them that they must have been on the wrong track,
and that they must seek elsewhere the solution of the
problem how to obtain personal liberty and happiness. The
greater the sacrifices in the past had been, and the less satis-
faction they had given, the greater now grew the zeal to
search for better methods, for the true and straight path, that
would lead them to the goal. Priests, preachers, statesmen,
national economists, teachers and writers of all kinds, began
to analyze life; and with little variation they all came to
one and the same conclusion: that changes must begin at
the root, and tliat the root from which all in life springs is
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214 THE ABENA.
composed of the two fibres, self-preservation and race preser-
vation; or to use the more definite terms of the realist, hunger
and love.
It was found that these instincts are the only real factors
that move the world and rule society, and that, if changes
for the better are to be brought about, these instincts must
be examined and modes to gratify them be found. Pulpit,
platform, and press, yea, even kings, did not hesitate to
serve as the spokesmen of the people.
All this, however, did not avail, because, though the evil
was known, no remedy suggested itself. The belief sprang
up that society had lost itself in a cul-de-%ae ; that it could
neither retreat nor advance. People began to look upon
this world as upon the worst of all possible worlds that
a fiend could have created. This depressing sentiment again
found expression in literature; and astonishing as it may be,
Germany, at the very period of her victories, and at the very
time when her progress in culture and science stood the
highest, turned to pessimism. Pessimism is nothing else
than the total indifference as to what fate may have in store
for us, based upon the assumption that no improvements can
be brought about. Schopenhauer and Hartman were looked
upon as the prophets of this new conception of the world,
which is the first cousin of oriental fatalism.
Pessimism, however, whether individual or national,
deceives itself. All the time the pessimist pretends to be
indifferent to his fate, or to despair of improving the con-
dition of things, he keeps on contemplating, meditating, and
thinking, until gradually he begins to see a light breaking
through the gloom and an exit opening itself before him.
In their pessimism people began to question, Is it the
fault of the tree that it is unable to vegetate? is it the
fault of the root, that the necessary nourishment does not
flow into it? or is it the fault of the ground in which human
society is planted ? Upon this the answer came : The tree
is sound in roots and branches; the fault lies with the quick-
sand which the winds, in course of time, had heaped over the
roots. A feeling came over the people that all our con-
ceptions of morality, of justice, of social relationship, are not
identical with the thing itself; or, in other words, that we
have become untrue to ourselves; that the roots of the tree
of society rested in the soil of a poisonous lie.
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MODERN GEiRMAtf LITERATURE. 21 5
Again we find that this sentiment was brought into full
consciousness through a literary exponent; and what had
been a dark presentiment or a gloomy misgiving became as
clear as daylight when Max Nordau published his famous
work, " Die Conventionellen Luegen der Culturmenschheit."
(Conventional lies of our civilization.)
This once understood, all went to work to cart away the
sand and to replace it by loam. Like mushrooms after a
rain shower, not only writers, but artists of all kinds sprang
up, who represented, with pen and brush and chisel, life and
its conditions as it is in reality, and waged a bitter war
against the idealistic school, which had misrepresented life to
suit the idealist's own fancy.
Astonishing as it may be to an American reader, the old
romantic school, with Goethe at the head, was thrown down
from the high pedestal upon which former generations had
placed it. The selections of themes, the personifications of
characters, the description of sentiments, of these writers
were weighed in the scales and found wanting. They were
utterly untrue ; nobody in life thought, felt, acted, or spoke
in the manner in which that school had made them think,
feel, speak, and act. Goethe had, therefore, forfeited his
right to pose as the unreachable ideal in German literature,
and his followers no longer commanded an army.
Even their manner of expression was attacked. People in
real life do not speak in verses or in rhymes, neither when
they are angry, nor when they feel happy, nor even when
they are in love, unless they are cranks. They use prose,
more or less grammatical, and more or less dialect; and it
is, therefore, that we expect prose, and not measured rhymes,
in our books. Poetry can exist without these artificial
wings, and can fulfil its mission more successfully and
more worthily by offering truth in the garb of truth; i. e.,
prose.
After idealism, romanticism, and rhyme had been thus
discarded, the next step taken was to announce and de-
nounce all writers who had palmed off upon an unsuspect-
ing public merely the counterfeit of realism; who would
minutely and realistically describe the dress, the habitations,
the arms, of their heroes, — even go so far as to make them
speak the dialect of their time and province, — but yet
who would not portray real human beings.
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216 THE ARENA.
Such writers were Auerbach, Birchpfeiffer, Hillern, and
others, who, in their so-called " Dorfgeschichten " (stories
of the village), presented to the reader, in the costume of
villagers, persons who never could be found in a farmhouse,
but were taken from the drawing-room, and merely mas-
queraded in the garb of peasants. Others, like Ebers and
Eckstein, distinguished themselves from the former merely
in that they dressed their unreal characters in the costumes
of ancient Rome and Egypt.
These few hints may suffice to illustrate the process of
removing the sand; but the reader must not think that it
was accomplished at once, or that it was done by an official
act. On the contrary, this literature was taught in the
schools; people kept the works of these authors in their
libraries, and pretended to admire them, though faith in
them had been irretrievably lost. People felt the unreality
of the old pattern, after which novelists composed their
romances and playwriters their plays. Their novels and
plays were crowded with noble-hearted heroes, virtuous
women, honest bankers, brave soldiers, and wicked villains,
acting in the most unreal manner, with very trifling vari-
ations. At the end, reward and punishment were dis-
tributed according to the established conception of morality.
For his sacrifices Hans would receive his Gretchen; and the
villain, who had placed obstacles in their way, would be
delivered over to the hands of the policeman. The public
would applaud, and the readers soliloquize, " That serves
them right; so it ought to be ! "
In real life, however, things run in different lines. Hans
does not win his Gretchen, notwithstanding the fact that
he loves her sincerely and loyally; she will prefer some
rich miscreant, who possibly may make her miserable.
Talents go to waste, because they cannot strike oppor-
tunities favorable to their development, and politicians are
able to hold themselves in position, even if they have
become notorious by their unscrupulous conduct.
It was, therefore, that the novels of Rosegger and the
dramas of Anzengruber struck a powerful chord in the
hearts of the German people. They chose for subjects
the burning questions of the time; their cast was made up
of peasants, as they live in the Austrian Alps, and they
made them speak and act like their prototypes. Their
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MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE. 217
writings were read with avidity, and people could not have
enough of their dramas. It was as if after a long fast
nourishing food was brought to the hungry.
The plant for the first time felt the influence of the loam
of truth, and henceforth refused to take anything but
realism.
Objective realism consists in portraying nature just as it
is, without arranging it; without adding or subtracting any-
thing. Real nature is the sole truth and the sole subject for
artistic representation. The eternal, unalterable law of
nature is the spirit which animates realism; therefore the
realist does not recognize degrees in artistic themes. To
him the death of a hero is not more worthy of representation
than the labor pains of an animal, because the same uniform
and omnipotent law of nature is incarnate in both.
This law peremptorily forbids the realist to idealize nature,
to beautify it according to his fancies, or to lay on paint and
powder to correct it. All mythological or allegorical fig-
ures are strictly prohibited, because they are nothing but
distortions.
Whatever nature produces is equally beautiful in the eyes
of the realist, and nothing is offensive to him when it
is regarded and represented as the necessary product of a
necessary development. Only the fantastical caricature is
reprehensive, because it contradicts the possibilities of
nature.
The obligatory honesty in his comprehension of nature
forces the realist to cast aside the conception of love as it
was held in previous literature. Till now, love was consid-
ered to be the first and predominant psychological motive
which directed the actions of men. The analysis of this
love showed a mixture of sentimentalism, unselfishness,
platonism, and longing for an ideal companion for strictly
ideal purposes. This was falsification of nature.
In the eyes of the realist love is sexuality, or, to use the
proper term of physical science, natural selection. There-
fore the realist does not give to love more room or more
importance in his works than it occupies in reality. Love
no more predominates all other motives, but has to share
its importance with hunger (or the instinct of self-preser-
vation), heredity, and adaptation (which means influence of
education, habit, and intercourse). Regarded as a passion,
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218 THE ABEKA.
love is not classified as a higher psychic motive than other
passions, such as egotism, ambition, pride, race feeling, or
pity.
Thus beholding love from an entirely different point of
view, the realist portrays it accurately, even if his picture
does not harmonize with the customary views of morality;
and if his natural description shocks the nerves of the prude,
it is a proof that they are not sound. Realism would deserve
to be scorned if it displayed the immoral or the disagree-
able as the highest aim. But quite to the contrary, we see
in all creations of realistic authors a prevailing demand for
truth, purity, chastity, self-knowledge, and justice, sometimes
even in a too obtrusive rhetoric. And yet we see realism
abused, slandered, jeered, yea, often proscribed. Sow ridicu-
lous! Would we not smile if an elderly coquette should
smash the mirror because it reflects, not only her brilliant
eyes and her Greek nose, but also her gray hair and the
wrinkles in her face?
Let us dissect what shocks the reader when he reads for
the first time a realistic book or witnesses a realistic play,
and see whether he has a plausible right to declare realism
immoral. In " Sodom's Ende " (the end of Sodom) we see
the painter Janko coming home from a swell party to the
humble home of his parents. From a feast of the " upper
ten," whose spoiled pet he is, he steps, physically and mentally
intoxicated, into the pure air of his home. On the same
floor lives his foster sister, a poor chaste girl, who idolizes
him. We hear his soliloquy, describing the battle between
his better self and his beastly desire to possess that maiden;
we see him break into her room, and we hear her doleful cry.
The sentimental idealist will find that " shocking," but the
same indignant knight of morality takes no exception to the
bastard in King Lear, although his origin may be traceable
to precisely such a scene.
Max Kretzer has shown, in a masterly picture of Berlin
life, how a weak character sinks by drink from step to step
till we see him welter in the gutter. The sensitive, affected
reader finds that disgusting, but he had laughed and ap-
plauded when a similar drunkard was the object of a splen-
did joke of his lordship in Shakespeare's "Taming of the
Shrew." Sapienti sat!
The characteristic, nay, the essential law of realism, is —
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MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE. 219
truth! If literature is to bear blissful fruit, it must be a
true picture of true life! To solve this ideal problem, the
poet must be imbued with the sacred mission of truth, and
must possess the necessary strength of character to be her
apostle. He must be gifted with a fine ear, a sharp eye, an
exquisite sensitiveness to separate truth from fiction, and the
courage to call a broom a broom. He is obliged to seek
humanity in all its classes and phases; he must feel its very
pulse from the first cry of the babe to the last sigh of the
dying man; he must investigate its nature, surroundings,
influences, developments, and crises; he must study the laws
of nature governing its every case, and finally — he must
portray everything exactly as he has found it.
Not necessarily must the realist stoop down to pick his
subjects from the gutter, and paint in loathsome detail the
most horrible, disgusting pictures of misery, vice, and crime.
But wherever they are the characteristics of individuals,
classes, or of society at large, it is his bounden duty not to
pass by with closed eyes, but to give them the consideration
and the place they require.
That in our modern realistic writings wickedness and
criminality abound, is because they exist in reality, and
therefore must naturally dominate in literature. The former
practice of improving the conditions of society by picturing
in literature " how it ought to be " was a total failure. As
the physician must make a diagnosis, before he uses his
knife or prescribes a certain medicine — so society must be
confronted with its faults in order to look for a remedy.
To prove whether these characteristics are fulfilled in mod-
ern German literature, we must make ourselves acquainted
with its representatives, or at least with the most prominent
ones. It would lead too far if I should try to give in this
essay samples taken from all their works ; it may suffice if I
mention their names and principal writings.
Among the best known novelists and writers of fiction, are
Karl Bleibtren, a writer of strong conviction, although he
tires sometimes by a long-winded style and a little too
much self-glorification; M. G. Kanrad, a fertile writer, both
celebrated and maligned on account of his picturing the
dark sides of Munich life; W. Wallroth^ distinguished for the
warmth of his colors ; and the two pessimists, Keltzer and
Konrad Albert^ the latter of whom is an out and out
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220 THE ARENA.
realist ; Detlef von Lilienkron, combining force of style with
elegance, who has lived — being a nobleman and army offi-
cer — among the " upper ten," and so is able to portray
them now in the quietude of his country-seat with an appall-
ing correctness; the most vigorous of all realists is Hermann
Conradi, of whom Detlef von Lilienkron says in his
"Macen": —
It took me two days to read Hermann Conradi's " Adam Mensch."
I confess, it affected me greatly. It is the most horrible, most repul-
sive, yet most attractive, book I ever read. The author places man
upon an operating table; then he calls his assistant, who rushes for-
ward, puts the ether tube over the subject's nose, and the operation
begins. It is a shocking book; regardless of consequences, it strikes
wounds to heal them. Many times I felt as if I must cast it aside,
but every time I said to myself, <J It is written by a great artist, by
a vigorous poet," and I kept on reading.
Before mentioning a few of the leading dramatic realists,
let it be understood that the battles between realism and
idealism were fought during the last few years, princi-
pally in Berlin. Some who favor liberty for all new move-
ments, exasperated by the exclusion of realism from the
theatres, formed a society, called " Freie Buehne " (free
stage), which brings out at its own expense the latest and
best realistic dramas, to enable the public to judge their
value. The " Freie Buehne " prospers remarkably, and many
a play presented there finds its way to the principal theatres
of Germany, and even to New York.
So " Die Elire " (honor), by Hermann Sudermann, which,
though not faultless in construction and conception, is a
masterly picture of Berlin life. Besides Sudermann are
worth mentioning, Gerhard Hauptmann^ " Vor Sonnenauf-
gang" (before sunrise) ; Hermann Bahr, " Die Grosse Suende "
(the great sin) ; Fritz Lienhard, " Wei tre volution " (revolu-
tion of the world) ; Max Stempel, " Morphin " ; Hans von
Basedoiv, " Gerechte Menschen " (righteous men) ; and,
above all, the most talented, but, alas! somewhat extrava-
gant, Richard Vos&, who became famous at the age of twenty-
five, through his book, " Scherben, Gesammelt vom Mueden
Mann " (potsherds, collected by a tired man), and whose
dramas, " Regula Brandt " and " Pater Modestus," are highly
promising.
Although realism discountenances the use of verse and
rhyme, still some lyric poets have joined the realistic army.
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MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE. 221
So far as form is concerned, they are still under the influence
of the past ; they have not yet emancipated themselves from
habit, but the spirit and contents of their poems are realistic
throughout. Arno Holz, Karl Henkell, R. M. v. Stern, and
especially the ardent anarchist, John Henry Mackay, are
noteworthy. The last mentioned is best presented by his
own words : —
I hate this life, this miserable life, with glowing hate!
Last, not least, Alfred Friedman, distinguished by a clear
comprehension of our time, sings: —
Eklektisches Jahrhundert,
Dem wir gebvren sind!
Ich geh! durch Dich verwundert;
Dein Sohn — und nicht Dein Kind!
(Eclectic century i in which we'r born! I walk amazed at thee!
thy son — and not thy child!) '
I cannot close without stating that what is termed " the
press" has also more or less fallen under the sway of realism.
Numerous periodicals have devoted themselves entirely to its
cause, the most noteworthy- among which are: De Gesell-
schaft (society), Freie Buehne fuer Moderne* Leben (free
stage for modern life), Kritisches Jahrbuch (critical an-
nual), Literarische KorrespoTidem (literary correspondence),
Moderne Dichtung (modern poesy), Deutche Bldtter (Ger-
man leaves). They are ably edited by most of the very men
whose names have already been mentioned.
The reader will by this time have become convinced
that realism exists in German literature as it has appeared
everywhere else. He will have foDowed its development
from its origin to its present stage. He will have scrutinized
the causes from which it has sprung, and thus he will be
able to judge for himself whether or not it vindicates its
existence enough to anticipate its future.
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THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CASE.
Verdict No. I.
OPINIONS OF DR. ALFRED RU8SEL WALLACE, D. C. L., THE MAR-
QUIS OF LORNE, O. B. Fa /HINGHAM, G. KRUKLL, APPLETON
MORGAN, FRANKLIN H. HEAD, REV. C. A. BARTOL, HENRY
GEORGE, AND FRANCES E. WILLARD.
[In the May Arena, the case of Bacon vs. Shakespeare went
to the jury, after having been argued at length by Edwin Reed,
Drs. A. Nicholson, F. J. Furnivall, and W. J. Rolfe, with closing
arguments by Hon. Ignatius Donnelly for the plaintiff, and Pro-
fessor Felix E. Schelling for the defence. In the following pages
we give the first instalment of the verdict, from which it will be
seen that Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, the Marquis of Lome,
Rev. C. A. Bartol, Appleton Morgan, Henry George, and Frank-
lin H. Head render a verdict in favor of the defence; while
O. B. Frothingham and Miss Frances E. Willard hold to the com-
posite theory of the composition of the Shakespearean plays, and
Mr. G. Kruell, the eminent wood engraver, renders his verdict in
favor of the plaintiff.]
I. ALFRED R. WALLACE, LL. D., OXON.
"When we are asked to believe that the whole of the plays and
poems attributed to Shakespeare were not written by him, but by
Lord Bacon, we naturally require evidence of the most convinc-
ing kind. It must be shown either that Bacon did actually write
them, in which case of course Shakespeare was not their author,
or that Shakespeare could not possibly have written them, in
which case somebody else must have done so, and we then
demand proof that Bacon could possibly, and did probably, write
them.
First, then, is there any good evidence that Bacon did write
them ? Positively none whatever ; only a number of vague hints
and suggestions, which might perhaps add some weight to an
insufficient amount of direct testimony, but in its absence are
entirely valueless. And then we have the enormous, the over-
whelming improbability, that any man would write, and allow to
be published or acted, so wonderful a series of poems and plays,
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THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CASE. 223
while another man received all the honor and all the profits ; and
though surviving that man for ten years, that the real author
never made the slightest claim to them, never confided the secret
to a single friend, and died without a word or a sign to show that
he had any part or share in them. To most persons this consid-
eration alone will be conclusive against Bacon's authorship.
The reasons alleged for believing that Shakespeare could not
have written them, are weak in the extreme. They amount to
this : That his early life was spent in a small country town ; that
he had not a university education ; that most of his early asso-
ciates and connections were illiterate ; that his signatures were
almost unintelligible ; and that no single letter or manuscript
exists in his handwriting. The wide knowledge of human nature,
of the court and the nobility, and of classical and modern litera-
ture, could not, it is alleged, have been acquired by such a man.
But in making this objection, the opponents of Shakespeare take
no account of the most important of all the facts — of that fact
without which the production of these works is in any case unin-
telligible — the fact that their author was a transcendent genius;
and further, that it is the especial quality of genius to be able to
acquire and assimilate knowledge, and to realize and interpret
the whole range of human passions, moods, and foibles, under
conditions that to ordinary men would be impossible. Admitting,
as we must admit, the genius, there is no difficulty, no improba-
bility. For the first twenty years of his conscious life, Shake-
speare lived in the midst of the calm and beautiful scenery of
Warwickshire, and acquired that extensive knowledge and love
of nature, and that sympathy with all her moods and aspects,
which are manifested throughout his works. The lordly castles
of Warwick and Kenilworth were within a dozen miles of Strat-
ford, and at times of festivity such castles were open house, and
at all times would be easily accessible through the friendship of
servants or retainers ; and thus might have been acquired, some
portion of that knowledge of the manners and speech of nobles
and kings, which appears in the historical plays. During his long
residence in London, crowded then as now with adventurers of
all nations, he would have had ample opportunity for studying
human nature under every possible aspect. The endearing
terms applied to him by his friends show that he had an attrac-
tive personality, and would, therefore, easily gain access to many
grades of society; while the law courts at Westminster would
afford ample opportunities for extending that knowledge of law
terms and legal processes, which he had probably begun to acquire
by means of justices' sessions and coroners' inquests in his native
town. Through his foreign acquaintances he might have obtained
translations of some of those Italian or Spanish tales which fur-
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224 THE ARENA.
nished a portion of his plots, and which have been supposed to
indicate an amount of learning he could not have possessed.
What genius can do under adverse circumstances and uncon-
genial surroundings, we see in the case of Chatterton, of Keats,
of Shelley. Shakespeare had much better opportunities than
any of these ; he was gifted with a far loftier genius, a broader
and more powerful intellect, a more balanced and harmonious
personality. Of this rare combination of qualities and oppor-
tunities, his works are the natural and consistent outcome. Alike
in their depth, their beauty, their exquisite fancy, their melodious
harmony, and their petty defects, they are the full expression of
the man and his surroundings.
Let us consider, lastly, whether, supposing Shakespeare were
altogether out of the way, Bacon could possibly have written the
plays and poems. These works are universally admitted to ex-
hibit the very highest poetry, the most exquisite fancy, the deep-
est pathos, the most inimitable humor. We are told by his
admirers that Bacon possessed all these qualities ; but when any
attempt is made to give us examples of them, we find only the
most commonplace verse or labored and monotonous prose. The
specimens of Bacon's versification given by Mr. Reed, in his
capacity of counsel for the defendant, demonstrate that he had
absolutely no poetic faculty; and as no better specimens have
been produced when advocating the plaintiff's cause, we may pre-
sume that none exist. We are told that his sense of humor was
phenomenal, that no man had a finer ear for melody of speech, —
but, again, no examples are given. We are told that he rewrote
his " Essays " many times, and gave them " a thousand exquisite
touches"; yet when we read them, and search for these alleged
beauties, either of poetic ideas or noble and harmonious passages,
we find only a polished mediocrity, with labored antitheses of
epithets, as utterly remote from the glowing thoughts and winged
words of Shakespeare, as is the doggerel version of the psalms by
Sternhold and Hopkins, from the hymns of Keble or the "In
Memoriam" of Tennyson. The man who conceived and deline-
ated such characters as Portia, Juliet, Imogen, and a score of
others, and who poured forth his soul in the "Sonnets," could
not possibly have written the essays on " Love " and " Marriage,"
in which not one spark of poetry or sentiment is allowed to
appear.
Again, what have the acknowledged writings of Bacon to show
of the intense love of nature, and the poetic ideas it inspired,
which are main characteristics of the author of the plays and
poems ? Flowers are therein continually referred to as illustra-
tions of the beauty of women. The white hand of the sleeping
Lucrece " showed like an April daisy on the grass " ; a girl's
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THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CASE. 225
complexion & compared with " morning roses newly washed with
dew"; and the writer's deep love and intense enjoyment of
flowers is shown by such expressions as "Daffodils . . . which
take the winds of March with beauty " ; the cuckoo-buds which
" do paint the meadows with delight " ; and the regret that "rough
winds do shake the darling buds of May."
This passionate love of nature will perhaps account for Shake-
speare's early retirement from London to his native town, where
he could enjoy those charms of rural scenery and natural beauty
which had aided in developing his poetic fancy in youth, and
which, to every true lover of nature, have a still purer influence
and a deeper significance in advancing years. This withdrawal
from London has, strangely enough, been made one of the argu-
ments against Shakespeare, as implying a want of taste for liter-
ary society, or for the refinements of life ; whereas it is really a
point in his favor, as showing that the fount of natural beauty,
from which his choicest poetic inspiration had sprung, had lost
none of its attraction in his maturer years.
The advocates of Bacon, on the other hand, have not attempted
to show that he was equally influenced by natural beauty. He
was, it is true, fond of gardens and gardening ; but his essay on
the subject is devoted mainly to a design for the arrangement of
a large garden, and to giving dry lists of the plants worthy of
cultivation. He dwells much on the odors of herbs and sweet-
smelling flowers, but he uses none of those expressions of admira-
tion for their beauty, which Shakespeare would certainly have
employed, nor does he indicate that they had for him any poetical
associations.
The facts and considerations now briefly set forth seem to me
absolutely to demonstrate two things. The first is, that, judging
from Bacon's acknowledged works, he could not possibly have
written the plays and poems attributed to Shakespeare. The
second is, that, given the essential attribute of genius of the high-
est kind, there is nothing whatever in the known facts of Shake-
speare's life that is opposed to the view of his being their author,
but, on the contrary, everything in its favor. Having, therefore,
the direct testimony of Ben Jonson, Fuller, and his two fellow-
actors who edited the folio of 1623, that Shakespeare wa* the au-
thor, while the terms of affection and admiration in which they
all speak of him, show that they considered him fully capable of
writing the works attributed to him, there remains no possible
reason for now disputing that testimony. Never, surely, was
there so utterly baseless a claim as that made by the advocates of
Bacon against Shakespeare.
Verdict for the defendant.
Alfred Russel Wallace.
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2&> ¥#15 A&Wk.
n. THE MABQUIS OF LORNE.
In answer to your request for my opinion on the controversy
raised in your review on the authorship of " Shakespeare's "
plays, I throw my vote for the authenticity of the old tradition,
as against the modern theory that Bacon's hand is visible through-
out these dramas. The argument against Shakespeare, drawn
from the fact that none of his manuscripts survive, would weigh
equally against Moli&re ever having written the plays ascribed to
him, for none in his handwriting exist. It is also known that
Shakespeare's daughter and granddaughter were very strict
Puritans, and were not likely to keep the plays. Most of the
first edition was burned at " Old Paul's." There is nothing in
Bacon's essays, beyond a few casual expressions common to the
time, that can remind one of Shakespeare's style. It is quite
possible that Bacon may have amused himself by giving hints, and
even more than hints, to Shakfespeare, who was glad to take from
other authors as well as from the book of nature, and I would cer-
tainly not have disdained any assistance from Bacon. The world
is jealous enough now, and was no less jealous in the days of
Elizabeth and James. Why should the fame of the plays have
been left to Shakespeare if it was not acknowledged that he was
the author ? Why did no one tell King James, before he ascended
the English throne, that the man to whom he wrote, to thank him
for the complimentary language used towards the Scottish royal
family in " Macbeth," was a fraud ? Why was it that men of
the world, like Southampton and Pembroke, were glad to have
their names known as approvers and patrons of Shakespeare?
Why was it that their contemporary, Jonson, called him " The
sweet swan of Avon," and lauded him to the skies as a man of
sweet and happy fancy ? No ; Bacon may have left a mark here
and there, and the allusions to " Hang Hog " and to St. Albans
may speak of him, but some threads do not make a garment, and
the garment all knew to be of Shakespeare's weaving. The evi-
dence now brought forward cannot overthrow contemporary faith.
Verdict for the defendant. Lorne.
in. O. B. FROTHINGHAM.
Mr. Edwin Reed is a lawyer of large experience, and accus-
tomed, therefore, to weigh evidence and balance arguments.
Perhaps he has more legal ability than literary perception; but in
his general position as showing the impossibility of the Shake-
spearean authorship, he is unanswerable. He is an earnest man, a
vigorous writer, and thoroughly convinced of the value of his
cause. One of his opponents calls him a " pettifogger," which
reminds one of a passage in Scott's "Antiquary," where Sir
Arthur Wardown criticises Oldbuck, who has beaten him in anti-
quarian controversy : —
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EHE BACOK-STtATtF^EARfl CASE. 22T
u You may observe that he never has any advantage of me in
dispute, unless when he avails himself of a sort of pettifogging
intimacy with dates, names, and trifling matters of fact — a tiresome
and frivolous accuracy of memory, which is entirely owing to his
mechanical descent."
Mr. Donnelly finds fault with him as an insufficient critic,
and says : —
" Mr. Reed betrays his client. He goes back on him like Mark
Twain's frog in the celebrated 'jumping match."'
There is, it is true, an apparent inconsistency, which Mr. Reed
can perhaps explain, for he has been a devoted champion of
Bacon for several years. In some of his details he is exceedingly
ingenious. His criticism of his opponent is clever. Many of his
positions are excellent, and not a few of his suggestions are acute
as well as just. His plea for Bacon, though strong, — stronger than
that of his opponents on the other side, — is not convincing, for the
reason that Bacon lacked precisely the quality of mind in which
the plays are supreme. His antagonists are accomplished men, and
have made a study of Shakespeare for many years ; they perhaps
have the advantage in literary exactness, but they do not touch
the antecedent impossibilities of the Shakespeare authorship,
which are insuperable. They confine themselves to proving that
Bacon could not have written the plays; they leave wholly
unfortified the position that Shakespeare did. On the whole, it
does not seem to me that they do full justice to their cause, but
are satisfied with meeting a few of Mr. Reed's incidental points.
The whole debate, indeed, appears to turn upon a few incidental
matters, whereof an expert alone can judge, and I am not enough
of a Shakespearean critic to pronounce upon them ; but the broad
field of contention is evident enough.
In regard to temper, Mr. Reed has greatly the superiority in
courtesy. Abuse is not argument; contempt is not criticism;
and reasonable people will not think a cause just, that defends
itself by vituperation. Both sides seem bent on maintaining a
position.
The authorship of Shakespeare and that of Bacon are equally im-
possible. Perhaps the plays had several authors, Bacon being one.
If called on to decide between Shakespeare and Bacon, I should
decide for Shakespeare — not on the ground of evidence, certainly,
for there is none, but on grounds of general tradition. The fact
that distinguished men, scholars, critics, students of all products
of the mind, have believed in the Shakespearean authorship, is at
least remarkable — men of genius, like Lamb, Coleridge, Emer-
son, Lowell, to mention no others. Perhaps the matter was not
brought to their attention ; perhaps the old theory of supernat-
ural inspiration swayed them. At all events, this was their faith.
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228 ME ABEttA.
If we abandon the Shakespearean authorship, we must pluck out
the best literature by the roots. Besides, there is a bitter tragedy
in the mistaken enthusiasm, that for more than two centuries has
been scattering flowers on the wrong grave and laying garlands
on the wrong head ; and although there are several instances of
this in history, we still resent it. Then, if the plays are freshly
interpreted and differently understood, if Mr. Taine's concep-
tion of them, for instance, is accepted, Shakespeare may have
been, in great measure at least, their author.
If the plays could be judged on their merits, independently of
their authorship, instead of being blindly eulogized and covered
up by actors and commentators, no harm would be done ; though
it is not quite true to say that the plays are the same whoever
wrote them, because they will be differently regarded as they are
ascribed to one man or another. If Bacon wrote them, we
should be on the lookout for more of mental philosophy, science
of nature, and social reform ; if Shakespeare wrote them, we should
be on the lookout for stage effects, passion, wit, drollery. That
criticism is entirely unscientific in its character, is shown by the
fact that there are twenty-four professions and employments
ascribed to Shakespeare, and several others are quite possible. It
must be confessed, too, that the mental consequences of Bacon's
authorship are, in a broad philosophical view, more in accordance
with the popular theory of evolution than that of Shakespeare ;
for in the latter case we have to suppose some miraculous influ-
ence — a mountain without roots, a peak springing up directly
from a meadow. Bacon, though a most remarkable man, was no
prodigy. In our generation, no violent conceptions are admitted
by thinkers. There must be a natural cause for every effect.
The fact is that the true case is not before us.
It is the fashion to lavish praise on the author, and to assume one
writer for all the plays, thus making the judgment unnecessarily
difficult. But there could hardly have been one writer for all the
plays. The author of the "Merry Wives of Windsor" could
scarcely have written " Hamlet." Did the same writer produce
" Midsummer Night's Dream " and " Macbeth," or " Much Ado
About Nothing" and "Lear"? Possibly the great tragedies may
be less profound than they are reputed ; the purpose of them may
be simpler. Excessive adulation may have exalted them unduly.
The hypothesis of several writers is accepted by Emerson, White,
Dowden, Lowell, as well as by John Weiss, an enthusiastic
admirer of Shakespeare and a singularly acute scholar. (" Wit,
Humor, and Shakespeare," pp. 200, 253, 261, 262.)
It must be said, too, that Shakespeare probably did write dog-
gerel. The following lines are ascribed to him as genuine by
Richard Grant White : —
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THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CASE. 229
"A parliamente member, a justice of peace,
At home a poor scarecrow©, at London an asse,
If lowsie is Lucy, as some volke miscalle it,
Then Lucy is lowsie, whatever befall it.
He thinks himself greate,
Yet an asse in his state,
We allow by his ears but with asses to mate,
If Lucy is lowsie, as some volke miscalle it,
Sing O lowsie Lucy, whatever befall it."
At about the same time that this was written, it is supposed
that the same author produced " Yenus and Adonis." Again,
after London was left, and Shakespeare lived in Stratford, he is
said to have written lines for the gravestone of a wealthy citizen,
and these, too, Mr. White believes to be genuine. They are as
follows : —
44 Ten in the hundred lies here in-grav'd;
'Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not saved;
If any man ask, Who lies in this tomb?
Oh, ho, quoth the devil, 'tis my John a-Coombe."
"Shakespeare," says Mr. White, "was not always writing
* Hamlet.' " True ; but the man who wrote this stuff could never
have written " Hamlet," nor could the man who wrote " Hamlet "
ever have written this. One might as well suppose that Bacon,
who wrote the translation of the Psalms, also wrote " The Tem-
pest." A re-reading of Mr. White's " Life " convinces me that
Shakespeare did not write the plays ; and a re-reading of the plays
convinces me that Bacon did not, for he was not a great poet, on
Mr. Reed's own confession, for he says, " Bacon's knowledge of
poetry, it is safe to say, would not have made him immortal."
But there is Ben Jonson, say the objectors. There are the
sonnets. Well, as to Ben Jonson, can anybody tell exactly what
he meant, or why he praised as he did ? Lord Palmerston ex-
claimed, " Oh, these fellows will always stand up for each other! "
and Emerson wrote : " Ben Jonson, though we have strained his
few words of regard and panegyric, had no suspicion of the elas-
tic fame, whose first vibrations he was attempting. He no doubt
thought the praise he had conceded to him generous, and esteemed
himself, out of all question, the better poet of the two." Ben
Jonson, too, bestowed the same praises upon Bacon that he be-
stowed upon Shakespeare. In regard to the sonnets, it will be
time enough to speak of them as an insuperable obstacle in the
way of the Baconians, when scholars are agreed about their origin
and meaning. White remarks, " It is to be observed that Shake-
speare, who so carefully published his 4 Venus and Adonis ' and
his * Lucrece,' and who looked so sharply after his interests, did
not publish his sonnets, although he must have known how
eagerly they would have been sought by the public." Again, " An
obscurity which seems impenetrable has fallen upon the origin of
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230 THE AKENA.
all these impressive compositions. Mr. Thomas Thorpe appears
in his dedication, as the Sphinx of literature, and thus far he has
not met his CEdipus."
The truth is that we know too much of both Shakespeare and
Bacon to think that either wrote the plays. The life of Bacon
has been repeatedly w .itten ; every scrap of paper about him has
been carefully scrutinized; every fact in his career has been
carefully weighed. Of Shakespeare, Emerson says, " He was a
good-natured sort of man, an actor and shareholder in the thea-
tre, not in any striking manner distinguished from other actors
and managers." It is true that we do not know much about him,
but what we do know is decidedly discreditable. The story of
his marriage makes him appear* licentious, passionate, and wild.
The suit against Philip Rogers for one pound, fifteen shillings,
ten pence, is thus described by White : " The 'pursuit of an im-
poverished man, for the sake of imprisoning him, and depriving
him both of the power of paying his debt and supporting him-
self and his family, is an instance in Shakespeare's life which
requires the utmost allowance and consideration for the practice
of the time and country, to enable us to contemplate with equa-
nimity — satisfaction is impossible." A project for enclosing
some common lands near Stratford makes Shakespeare appear
in a very disagreeable light. His objection to the measure was
that it would press heavily upon his own property. The corpora-
tion of Stratford — and it must be remembered that corporations
have no souls — objected to the same measure on the ground that
it would oppress the poorer classes. They were human, he was
not.
The traditions of him are, if anything, worse than the facts.
The story that he was a poacher ; the tale recorded in Manning-
ham's diary of his superseding Richard Burbadge, a great actor
of the day, in the favors of a woman who was no better than she
should be ; and the tradition of his death from exposure after a
drunken bout, describe a merry but utterly unprincipled man ;
and there are no traditions of an opposite character; there is
nothing to break the force of these traditions. If we knew noth-
ing about Shakespeare, we could believe in his authorship of the
plays, because then there would be nothing to shame him; but now,
these legends — coupled with the facts that his genius deserted
him in middle life ; that he was utterly indifferent to any literary
works; that he left no library; never spoke of himself as an
author ; was comparatively unknown in his generation ; had no
intercourse with men of learning, genius, culture ; that he was
never heard of as a writer until long after his death — make it
impossible for me to believe that he could have produced these
works.
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THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CASE. 231
The real difficulty is to reconcile Shakespeare and the plays.
Emerson cannot put them together: " The Egyptian verdict of
the Shakespeare Societies comes to mind, that he was a jovial
actor and manager. I cannot marry this fact to his verse. Other
admirable men have led lives in some sort of keeping with their
thought ; but this man, in wide contrast. Had he been less, had
he reached only the common measure of great authors, of Bacon,
Milton, Tasso, Cervantes, we might leave the fact in the twilight
of human fate ; but that this man of men, — he who gave to the
science of mind a new and larger subject than had ever existed,
and planted .the standard of humanity some furlongs forward
into chaos, — that he should not be wise for himself, it must
even go into the world's history, that the best poet led an ob-
scure and profane life, using his genius for public amusement."
Professor Dowden supposes that Shakespeare had a double life,
and pulls the man and his plays together by glorifying the dramas
and by dignifying Shakespeare's last years : " He broke his magic
staff ; he drowned his book deeper than ever plummet sounded ;
he went back — serenely looking down upon all of human life, yet
refusing his share in none of it — to his dukedom (!) at Stratford,
resolved to do duke's work, such as it is, well ; yet Prospero must
forever have remained somewhat apart, and distinguished from
other dukes and magnificoes by virtues of the enchanted island
and the marvellous years of mageship." . . .
u Rescuing his soul from all bitterness, he arrived finally at a
temper strong and self-possessed as that of stoicism, yet free
from the stoical attitude of defiance ; a temper liberal, gracious,
charitable ; a tender yet strenuous calm."
Taine (" English Literature," Vol. i. p. 296, etc.) reconciles the
two, but at the expense of the plays. The poetry is by him still
unaccounted for — the intellectual resiliency, the calm, profound
wisdom.
On the whole, here is a mystery which may never be cleared
away. O. B. Frothingham.
Verdict — Mr. Frothingham holds that several hands were
employed in the composition of the Shakespearean plays.
IV. G. KRUELL.
The controversy, " Shakespeare vs. Bacon," in The Arena has
only strengthened my belief that the Stratford man never wrote
the plays ; so the only man possible left, is Francis Bacon.
The defenders of Shakespeare have certainly proved that their
weapons of defence for their hero are much weaker than anybody
could expect. G. Kruell,
G. Kruell renders a verdict w favor of the plaintiff,
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282 THE ARENA.
V. APPLETON MORGAN.
Were the form of an action at law to be adhered to in this
discussion, I should for the defendant suggest a demurrer, and
for the plaintiff a motion for judgment upon Professor Rolfe's
" answer." And were I the judge, instead of what I understand
that you appoint me, — a juryman, — I should be inclined to
strike out Professor Rolfe's "answer" very speedily as stale
matter (to which the complaint was, in itself, an answer), and
concerning itself with the childish Donnelly cipher, to which Mr.
Reed himself was far too sensible to even allude. But bad as
the answer is, Mr. Reed's complaint needs none, good or bad.
The evidently proper pleading is a general demurrer, u that the
complaint does not allege facts sufficient to constitute a cause of
action." A complaint consisting of negatives, or of negative alle-
gations merely, would be a curiosity in a court of law — if it ever
got into court at all ; and if it did, it would remain there only
long enough to be thrown out. It certainly would never reach a
jury, for the Baconian case — and Mr. Reed fairly states it — is
found upon examination to be built, not of facts, but of coinci-
dences. But a coincidence, nor a hundred coincidences, never
proved anything, and never can and never will prove anything.
As the man said about the ghosts, we have all of us seen too
many coincidences to believe in them. And, moreover, what is a
coincidence to one man is not a coincidence to another, but the
merest convention and commonplace. The utmost that a coinci-
dence can do is to build up a paradox ; and if there is anything
less safe or more useless than a coincidence, it is a paradox.
Supposing I should say, for example, that the most dangerous
railroad crossing in the world was the safest railroad crossing in
the world. That would be a paradox ; and it would be strictly
true, for I could easily demonstrate that the most dangerous rail-
road crossing in the world was the one most carefully watched,
and was, therefore, the safest. But although strictly true, my
paradox would prove nothing, and add nothing to the world's
knowledge of railway science or experience in the art of operat-
ing a railroad. And so with the Paradox Baconian: it travels
only to a certain point, beyond which it is a delusion and a snare,
a trick and device ; and wherein it is true, it is true only to those
whose information has only reached a certain point, and there it
stands, and proves just nothing at all ! The great majority of
people disbelieve in a Baconian authorship for precisely the same
reason that the Baconians give for disbelieving in a Shake-
spearean authorship of the Shakespeare plays; namely, because
it cannot be proved. This majority is reinforced by the compar-
atively small body of students who know that the Shakespearean
authorship can be proved, and so ignore the Baconian and all his
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THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CASE. 233
works with a contempt that may be, and doubtless is, a little too
lofty. (For, in my opinion, no honest doubt ought to be ignored,
if reasonable; and the Shakespeare plays are so miraculous,
that a doubt that they were written by any one man, or still more
miraculously, by more than one man, becomes, to many minds,
a candid and reasonable doubt.) The Baconians, on the other
hand, though in the minority, are alert and fearless, industrious
and versatile, and insensible to ridicule ; and they have the vigor
of the onset, and the sympathy of the public, which admires pluck
and faith, and which loves to see martinets and precisians and
dry-as-dusts confounded and put to flight. For the defence has
usually been intrusted either to martinets or precisians or dry-
as-dusts, or to those whose contempt of their opponents was too
fine and Italian to catch the sympathy of the public, which loves
to think that it is worth being reasoned with.
The great strength of the Baconian case, however, has always
been, the vast lengths to which the progressional Shakespeare
critics go — their conceits, absurdities, and oracular pronounce-
ments upon things which are unascertainable, and if ascertaina-
ble, are entirely immaterial. For example, Professor Rolfe says
in his u answer " before me, " In these latter years the chronology
of the plays has been pretty well settled." Now this " chronol-
ogy" — that is, in the ordinary, dictionary, vernacular meaning of
the word — has never been settled, and never can be, and would be
immaterial if it were u settled." Even the dates on the little
pages of the Quartos reveal nothing ; for Shakespeare, like every
other author, wrote much before he achieved his first success ; and
the instant he achieved his first success, publishers hastened to
bring out everything he had on hand, which accounts for such
unequal plays as the beautiful "Midsummer Night's Dream,"
almost a masque for loveliness, and the sparkling and perfect
comedy of "The Merchant of Venice," and the crude and
juvenile "Titus Andronicus," appearing in one and the same
year, 1'600.
If, however, we understand by " chronology of the plays " those
absurd things which are called " periods," and " verse tests," and
" groups " (a commentator, named Furnivall, has reduced Shake-
speare to six or seven of these latter: "The Unfit-Nature-
or-Under-Burden-Falling group," " The Sunny-or- Sweet-Time
group," and so on ad nauseam), then Professor Rolfe is right, —
the "chronology" has been "settled," and we have only to
understand that, great as Shakespeare was, he could not write
long metre in his short metre periods, or short metre in his
long metre periods, or " Sunny-or-Sweet-Time " plays in his
"Under-Burden-Falling group" season; and it is this sort of
thing which, while it may make the unthinking laugh, makes the
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234 THE AEENA.
judicious grieve, — which renders Shakespeare to his professional
critic, as is the height of the sublime to the height of the ridicu-
lous, — it is against this sort of thing that the Baconian theory
has come as a public relief and a furlough, and it has been
welcomed accordingly, and has deceived not a few!
And so, if called upon to decide the merits of the debate, as
a debate, I should decide for Mr. Reed ; but if called upon to
decide upon the merits of the question, I should vote for Shake-
speare.
Shakespeare wrote his plays as Mr. Boucicault wrote his, and
as M. Sardou writes his. He gathered his material wherever he
found it, and he assimilated whatever he required of what he
found (" gathered humors of all men," as Aubrey expresses it).
There is much, no doubt, of Marlowe and of Green and of Ben
Jon son in the Shakespeare plays ; and possibly something scep-
tical or ponderous or finical from Bacon, may have gotten in
there along with the rest. But the plays are Shakespeare's.
Mr. Donnelly says, in the May Arena, that I wrote a book to
prove the Baconian authorship, u and then in five minutes took it
all back," and intimates (as I understand him) that I recanted for
the sake of the applause of "a few young gentlemen calling
themselves a Shakespeare society."
I beg Mr. Donnelly's pardon, but the facts are not exactly such
as to justify this proposition.
A gentleman who writes a book to argue one thing, and then
disavows his own arguments, certainly should be called upon to
explain ; and as a matter of fact, I have been making explana-
tions for the last eight years. I wrote " The Shakespearean
Myth " intending it as an assessment of the probabilities of the
Bacon case as compared with the Shakespeare postulates; and I
am perfectly willing to admit that my bias was at that time toward
the Bacon side. But whatever belief I had in Bacon was not
based on any arguments, my own or anybody's else's, nor yet on
the miracle (for such I still deem it) of the plays having been
written by Shakespeare (and as to this, I may say that it would
have been no less a miracle, in my judgment, had they been writ-
ten by Bacon). My belief was based on certain pieces of cir-
cumstantial evidence, which, whatever may be said against it, is
at least evidence without motive and without bias, viz. : First,
the Toby Matthew Postscript; second, the Northumberland
Manuscript; third, the letter to Sir John Davies; fourth, the
affair of the "Richard II."; and fifth, the date of the "1622
Folio." But such as it is, the evidence of these items has been
very minutely examined within a year or two, and since my
" Myth " was written, and in my opinion, exploded.
1. In 1891, 1 asked Mr. A. A, Adee and Mr. Alfred Waites,
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THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CASE. 235
two of the keenest logicians and ablest literary archaeologists I
know, to examine the Toby Matthew postscript and write me the
result. They were kind enough to do so, and I printed their cor-
respondence with me in Shakespeareana (vol. viii., pp. 44-49).
The result was, that, while the allusion lay between Don Fran-
cesco de Quevedo Villegas and Francis Albani, it was carried to
a demonstration that Sir Toby was not alluding to Bacon. (I
may add that both Mr. Adee and Mr. Waites are linguists as well
as scholars, and that neither of them took their references at
second hand, or upon trust, without examination.)
2. Mr. Waites is also to be credited with (in my judgment)
entirely destroying the value, for the Bacon theory, of the North-
umberland manuscript; for he finds, not only the names of
Shakespeare, and those of some of his plays, in the scribbling,
but the name "Thomas Nash," and of one of Nash's plays, "The
Isle of Dogs," also therein. Now while this leaves the cumula-
tive value of the evidence intact for whatever it is worth other-
wise, it utterly destroys it for the Baconians. Its value to the
Baconians was that Bacon's amanuensis, in scribbling listlessly
upon the cover of one of the manuscripts he had been working
at for his employer, had betrayed the fact that Bacon, in his
mind, was associated with the name " William Shakespeare" and
with the names of certain plays. The strength of the evidence —
quoad Baconian evidence — was in this betrayal of the involun-
tary association in the mind of the amanuensis. But if the
amanuensis also associated in his mind the name of Bacon with
the name of Thomas Nash, and with the name of one of Nash's
plays, as well as with one or more of Shakespeare's, the evidence,
while still circumstantial evidence (and very interesting circum-
stantial evidence), of the existence of Shakespeare, and of Nash,
and of their respective plays, is not evidence that Bacon wrote
either Shakespeare's or Nash's plays, — unless " Nash," as well as
"Shakespeare," was a nom de plume of Bacon's. (See Mr.
Waites' demonstration, Shakespeareana^ vol. vi., p. 519), and that
I do not understand the Baconians to, at present, claim.
3, 4. The Davies letter and the affair of the play of " Richard
II " prove, from the Baconian standpoint (if they prove anything),
that everybody knew that Bacon was the author of the Shake-
speare plays. Above all, they prove that Queen Elizabeth knew
it. But as this is inconsistent with — is utterly destructive of —
the Baconian theory, it is unnecessary, for present purposes, to
discuss either of them here. (See, as to the Davies letter, Shake-
speareana, vol. vii., p. 98, and as to " Richard II." Mr .Waites' In-
troduction to vol. xvii. of the Bankside Shakespeare.)
5. The so-called " 1622 Folio " is a pure " fake." It is in the
Lenox Library, and anybody can examine i£ for himself. I
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236 THE ARENA.
examined it in the presence of the late Mr. Aliibone, and again in
the presence of the late Dr. Moore, and both agreed with me
perfectly that the 3, in 1623, had been made into a 2, by paring
off the bottom of the title page and making the lower bar of the
loop with a pen. Later 1 sent a man named Fleming (not a
Shakespeare scholar, but a man with no motive for prevarication)
to examine it, and he arrived at the same conclusion. My state-
ment will be found in a footnote at page 60 of " Shakespeare, in
Fact and in Criticism," and Fleming's corroboration in Shakespear-
eana, vol. v., p. 92. But as I say, anybody (Mr. Donnelly if he
pleases) can examine the folio in the Lenox Library at any time.
Admitting, then, as Mr. Donnelly says, that I wrote, ten years
ago, a book to prove the Baconian authorship, it seems to me that
if anything, I should be rather commended than condemned, for
being frank enough to publicly state that I had, as I believed,
become convinced that I was mistaken. (See also " My Shake-
spearean Uncertainties," ShakespeareanOy vol. v., p. 1, and letter
to Mr. T. L. Jordan, Id. vol. x., p. 61. Appleton Morgan.
Verdict for the defendant.
VI. FRANKLIN H. HEAD.
Bacon, in intellectual power, is one of the dozen most richly
endowed men of all time. He made modern science possible.
He gave the death blow to the philosophy which reasoned from
theory to facts, and founded the method of collecting facts from
which to formulate systems. In our day he would have done the
work of Herbert Spencer; would have classified the data of
painstaking specialists, and made the vast generalizations embod-
ied in the philosophy of evolution. He was a master of terse
and vigorous English, of a strong and often graceful style, but
absolutely devoid of poetic fancy or imagination. Like Shake-
speare, he absorbed largely from others ; and his Promus, where
he jotted down borrowed thoughts and phrases for use, shows
sundry slightly disguised sentences taken from Shakespeare's
plays.
Shakespeare is the one supreme poet of humanity ; the popu-
lar playwright of an illustrious age. His friends, Raleigh, Jon-
son, Beaumont, Fletcher, Drayton, recognized him easily as their
superior in wit, their poetic and dramatic master. Through his
pages are scattered the gems and the gold of all the ages. Every
phase of our common humanity is to him an open book. Lan-
guage recognizes in him its absolute master ; is plastic as clay in
the potter's hands ; at his bidding it sings soft and sweet as the
harp of ^Eolus, or is marshalled in sentences resonant and majes-
tic as the voice of the multitudinous sea. His imperial intellect
is dominated and permeated by an exquisite poetic fancy ; by $n
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THE BACOtf-SHAKESf»EABE CASE. 237
imagination at once chastened and sublime. He was a heaven-
born genius. To argue aught from his ancestry or early educa-
tion, is to ignore the fact that genius is the direct gift of God,
and its possessor above and beyond all rules and limitations which
compass the average man.
To suggest that Bacon wrote the Shakespeare poems is as
absurd, from his mental endowment, as to argue that Huxley
wrote the poems of Tennyson. To illustrate Bacon's want of
poetic faculty : It was the fashion in his day to write poetry.
He must try his hand. He published an alleged dramatic poem,
a masque, the worst of the century. He essayed to translate
into English lyrics, with others, the 90th psalm. He poetizes
the words, " From everlasting to everlasting thou art God," by
" One God thou wert and art and still shalt be;
The line of time, it shall not measure thee."
Can one conceive the author of
" The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve,"
rendering the sublime passage quoted from the Psalms, by a state-
ment in limping doggerel, that time cannot with a tape line deter-
mine the ciroumference of God?
Verdict for the defendant. Franklin H. Head.
VTI. C. A. BABTOL.
If, as the French Buffon said, " The style is the man him-
self," Bacon did not write Shakespeare, nor are the two a
binary star. The parallel between them is of disjoined expres-
sions, a contrast both of spirit and of form. Bacon is weighty,
Shakespeare imponderable ; Bacon is reflective, Shakespeare intu-
itive; Bacon is fanciful, Shakespeare is imaginative; Bacon is
logical, Shakespeare dramatic; Bacon's rhyme is mechanical,
Shakespeare's rhythm is musical; Bacon's poetry is versified
prose, Shakespeare's prose is poetry; Bacon brings a scheme,
Shakespeare a chime; Bacon never escapes from, and Shake-
speare effaces, himself ; Bacon has eloquence and Shakespeare
song; Bacon was selfish and Shakespeare humane; Bacon was
ambitious, greedy of wealth and fame, Shakespeare, like the
greatest of birds, which leaves its eggs to be hatched in the sand ;
Bacon borrowed what Shakespeare lent; Bacon transferred what
Shakespeare transfigured ; Bacon rose and fell, Shakespeare is in
the zenith ; Bacon does not better Shakespeare's phrase, but, like
a thief, disguises and deforms what he steals; Bacon gives a
creed, Shakespeare a mirror; Bacon is learned, Shakespeare
adorns what he adopts, as the thoughts of France found a trum-
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238 THE ABfitfA.
pet in Mirabeau's mouth ; Bacon had many equals, Shakespeare*
no mates but Homer and Dante ; he is their peer or superior.
Milton passes by Bacon and singles out Shakespeare for his
praise. Walter Scott forgets Bacon, and puts Shakespeare " next
after the Bible." Bacon's brain is a contribution-box, Shake-
speare's a mine and mint. They are in their manner — which in
an author is a chief matter — unlike. We can measure Bacon's,
but not Shakespeare's, mind. The Baconians mistake appearance
for substance, as the dog in iEsop's fable dropped the meat to
. bite its shadow in the brook. Verbal comparisons, such as they
argue from, would confound the title of many a writer to his own
works. The resemblance they cite may be casual coincidence,
unconscious recollection, plagiarism or proverb, painting re-
touched or an altered sketch. A man's genius is certified by
his intrinsic quality, as is a coast survey by the base line.
Shakespeare stands alone. C. A. Babtol.
Verdict for the defendant.
Vm. HENRY GEORGB.
I have read the articles published in The Arena as to the
authorship of Shakespeare's plays, with the unclouded conviction
that these plays are properly attributed to Shakespeare, and that
nothing but perversity could attribute them to Bacon. If, in
your tribunal of literary criticism, there is in use any phrase that
will soundingly declare the allegation preposterously false, and
the " allegators " wanton and pestilent disturbers, record it as my
verdict in this case. Yours truly,
Henry George.
Henry George renders a verdict in favor of defendant.
IX. FRANCES WILLARD.
My opinion is, that to neither Shakespeare nor Bacon do the
laurels of authorship belong. That is, I think the works were
composite. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that Lord Bacon
and a number of other brilliant thinkers of the Elizabethan era,
who were nobles, and who, owing to the position of the stage,
would not eare to have their names associated with the drama,
composed or moulded the plays, and Shakespeare, possessing, as
he unquestionably did, a master dramatic power, readily recast
them for the stage. I do not believe the prosaic Bacon could
have written anything which partook of the universal mind so
largely, as the works attributed to Shakespeare; neither do I
believe that a man with the little learning that Shakespeare pos-
sessed, even with the cast of the old plays before him, could
have produced as scholarly a work as these dramas ; and I doubt
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tfffl! BACOtf-SgAKKSP&AMi CASti. 2S§
Very much whether he had a nature fine and sensitive enough, to
give many of the most wonderful touches to the works. If
Shakespeare wrote the plays ascribed to him without the assist-
ance of other human beings, the only explanation, in my mind,
would lie in the fact of inspiration of a high order ; for as Emer-
son; I think it was, said, " If Shakespeare had created the human
heart, he could not have better understood human nature."
Believe me, yours with high regard,
Frances E. Willabd.
Frances E. Willard inclines to the belief in composite author-
ship.
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THE CONFESSIONS OF A SUICIDE. 1
BY COULSON KERNAHAN.
It was midnight when I reached the water, and over London
Bridge two thin and straggling human streams, which flowed as
restlessly on as the running of the river beneath the arches,
poured incessantly in opposite directions. I had very little recol-
lection of how I came to be there. I remember a time — was it
possible it could have been only that morning ! — when my life
lay not all un joyless before me ; but between then and now, there
yawned an impassable gulf, and I seemed to have lived centuries
since the blow had fallen.
The news reached me while I was sitting at breakfast in the
morning, and evening found me lying humped in the same chair,
with head on breast, and hollow, haggard eyes a-stare, and the
letter, which was answerable for all, still fluttering in the fingers
of the nerveless arm that drooped over the chair back. I was
as one paralyzed. My brain had stopped — just as a drowning
man's watch stops on coming in contact with the water — at the
moment when I had received the blow. As the hands of the
drowned man's watch indicate only the time when to him time
ceased to be, so on the dial of my consciousness there was re-
corded but one fateful fact; and into one fierce focal point of
light — the consciousness of my misery — all the thoughts which
passed through the burning glass of my brain were concentrated.
Suddenly I started convulsively, catching my breath, and
clinching my hand, until the letter which lay in it was crushed
to a ball ; for, like the dart of a serpent's tongue upon a sleeping
bird, the thought that I had it in my power to end my misery,
darted through my deadened brain. Just as I had been pre-
viously dominated by the one thought of my wretchedness, so
now, I was alone possessed by the one thought of suicide. All
the slumbering hounds of consciousness gave tongue at that
thought, and swept on at full cry in wild pursuit; and that
* Note by the Writer. — These experiences came to my knowledge some years
ago; but for reasons which it is scarcely necessary to enter upon here, I was not at
liberty to make them known. Now that those reasons no longer exist. I am glad of an
opportunity to put the facts upon record. The story was told me while it was fresh In
the narrator's memory, and while he was in a condition of intense mental excitement.
My paper is transcribed from notes which I made immediately afterwards, but I have
given it very much as I heard it, the last sentence only being an addition. Headers of
" A Dead Man's Diary " may be interested to know that upon the experiences here
described, that book was entirely founded.
240
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THE CONFESSIONS OF A SUICIDE. 241
thought I set before me as the runDer sets the mark towards
which to press. Self-interest, expediency, and religion sprang
up clamoring, and, knocking at the door of my brain, cried out,
"What will it profit thee if thou doest this thing? Knowest
thou not that punishment will await thee hereafter ? " But I let
them knock at an unopened door; and when conscience arose,
and, placing herself in my pathway, strove with despairing hands
to drag me back, I would not as much as let my eyes rest upon
her, but, turning from her, cried out, " This thing I will do and
must!"
How or when I left my lodgings, I have no knowledge ; but my
next recollection is that of finding myself in the street. Stoop-
ing and slouched, with head on breast and burning eyes a-stare,
and choosing always the darkest street and crossing, I slunk
doggedly on, shrinking from, and yet scarcely heeding, the passers,
until at last I reached the bridge, and, with shoulder hunched to
the wall, dragged myself slowly along to the first recess, and
paused to peer over the parapet upon the water.
Westward the Cannon Street viaduct barred the view of the
river, and through the cold shine of the electric lights, the gas-
lamps on the distant embankment burned yellow and dim. A
train, laboring like a blown runner, puffed panting over the bridge.
For one second the electric light flickered from glare to gloom,
and then flared out into a dazzling purplish-pink, which lit every
carriage with such startling distinctness, that the features of the
passengers were plainly visible. A face looked out across the
water into mine, and I saw that it was the face of the woman
who had broken ray heart. Forgetful of the fact that the blaze
of light by which she was surrounded would effectually blind her
to all that lay outside ; f orgetf id of my wrongs, and of the ruin
she had brought to me, and forgetful of everything except my
wretchedness and my love for her, I stretched out my arms with
an eager and passionate cry ; but even as I did so, she smiled and
turned to speak to a companion in the compartment, and in
another moment the train passed on, and was lost under the
huge half-cylinder which roofs the station, leaving me alone upon
the dark bridge, and in the night — as alone as I had been before
she had come into my life, as alone as I should be in the death
which I was there to seek. Alone we die; alone we live and
suffer, and sympathy can avail us as little as hate. Your sym-
pathy is powerless to avert one pang of the pain which tears me,
for sympathy is but the stretching of hands across an impassable
gulf. Even love resembles less the blending of clouds upon the
blue, than the sad vigil of neighboring stars. We are companions
one to another, we are affected by the nearness or distance of the
loved one, but never, ah ! never do we touch.
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242 THE ABENA.
Sick in soul, and faint in body (for I had had no food since
the morning), I turned and crossed to the eastward side of the
bridge. Below me, in naked majesty, and with blear lights
ranged on the right hand and on the left, like death candles by
a negro's corpse, brooded the black mystery of the river. As I
looked down upon the waters — here flowing with snaky and
treacherous swiftness under a surface as smooth as glass ; there
foaming in eddy and swirl, or sliding as sullenly on as molten
pitch, and barred by the broken reflection of lights on steamer
and barge — my excited fancy seemed to see the mouth of hell
lying before me. I had always thought of hell as a place far
distant; but now I localized it immediately beneath the water, and
believed that I had but to plunge to the other side of those inky
waves to find hell and all its horrors awaiting me — horrors,
which I was, of my own will, and not by the decree of God or
devil, about to seek. I hugged myself with a hideous pride as I
thought of it. Yes, the life, which men murder and lie to pro-
long, which they sell their souls to save, I was about to fling
unvalued from me. The hell, to escape from which they shuffle
and whimper and cringe, and portion out their days in petty
rounds of fasting, church-going, and prayer, wherein neither song
nor art nor anything which gives joy to life, has place — this hell,
I was of my own accord about to seek.
" Do thy worst, O God ! " I shrieked. a Thou mayest be cruel,
but thou canst not be more cruel than I can be to myself. I fear
not the death with which thou frightenest us here ; the hell with
which thou threatenest us hereafter ; and wert thou, thyself, to
open for me the gates of heaven, I would spurn thy offer, and
fling myself of my own will into hell. Of my own choice I came
not into the world, but of my own choice I can and will leave it ;
and thou, O God, the omnipotent, art powerless to prevent me !
Behold, the thing which thou madest mocks thee and defies thee !
Thou gavest me life, O God, and thus do I fling thy vile gift
back!"
With a cry like the cry of a wild beast, I sprang at a bound
upon the parapet. For one moment I tottered, swaying betwixt
river and sky, above me the wan, white face of a swooning moon,
below me the dark mystery of the river ; and then with impious
hands upthrust to the silent heaven, and with a shriek of blas-
phemy upon my lips, I sprang out, far out, into the night.
I remember that a momentary contraction of the stomach and
a sense of sickness followed the leap. I can recall the hissing of
hot blood in my ears, the cold rush, as of a mighty wind, but
have no recollection of striking the water.
Then there came a sudden and deadly shock of an all-envelop-
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THE CONFESSIONS OP A SUICIDE. 248
ing cold, which sent such torture of cramp to every muscle, that
my limbs were drawn up distortedly to my body; and in the
next moment I was battling and beating for breath, fighting for
life, and clutching at the unsubstantial water in such frenzy of
fear, that it was churned, as it closed over my head, into crackling
bubbles of foam. Blood and fire were in my ears and mouth and
nostrils. My eyes were balls of flame, which lit up the cup of my
brain, and I saw red blood whirling round and round in it, as
water whirls in a whirlpool.
But slowly and surely, and with paralyzing numbness, the cold
stole through body and limb. My struggles became less and less
fierce, and the fires flickered and went out. From my brain the
blood had cleared, and it was now an empty chamber, into which
I looked, as one looks into a room through a window ; and I saw
pictures come and go upon the walls.
*******
A motherless, brotherless, sisterless child sat alone in a little
dark garret, so near the roof that he could hear the rain-drops
pattering upon the tiles. The side walls of the garret slanted
upward and onward from the floor, so that there was scarcely
room to stand upright, except where they met in a point over-
head ; and the little leaden-paned window, by which he sat, with
his head upon his hands and his elbows upon the sill, was set so
far back into the room, and had such thick and slanting walls on
either side in front, that his view was limited to the sky and the
upper windows of an opposite house. But it was a warm, wet,
summer Sunday evening, and one of these windows, from which
there floated the words of an evening hymn, was open, and he
could see a group of happy-faced children gathered around an
old piano, in a small and shabby but homelike room. He could
see the uplifted, worshipping face of the young mother, and her
white fingers wandering reverently among the time-mellowed,
time-yellowed ivory keys. He saw her turn with a loving smile
to slip an arm around a little pinafored, pink-cheeked fellow of
his own age at her side ; and then the picture faded out and was
succeeded by another.
*******
A heavy-mouthed, dark-eyed lad, sallow of complexion, and
with straight, stiff hair, thick-massed and growing low down over
scowling brows, sat with his feet upon the fender and his elbows
on his knees, looking sullenly and fixedly at the fire that burned
in the grate of a dingy parlor. His chin was rested upon the cup
of his right hand, his fingers being hooked till the tips touched
the teeth ; and as he sat, he bit steadily, almost viciously, at his
nails. His left hand was buried in the shaggy hair that was
brushed over his ears, and on a chair by his side lay an open
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244 THE ARENA.
Bible. Some strange emotion stirred within him. His nostrils
dilated and quivered, and in his eyes there was a dull and lurid
glow, like the reflection of subterranean fires upon the belly of
clouds that hang over the rtiouth of a volcano. Suddenly he
flung himself, rather than rose, to his feet, and began to pace the
room restlessly.
" It is to the abject fear of death, the fear which makes us crave
for something superhuman to cling to, when the human can avail
us no more, that the world owes its conception of a God," he
cried. " We are cowards who would rather lull our fears to rest
with a lie, than face the inevitable facts. All the religions of the
world are rivers that rise from one selfish source ; and were there
no death, God would be but a subject for the curious speculation
of the philosopher, and the majority of men would concern them-
selves as little about him as about the plurality of worlds. But
death is, and must be faced; and so we try to bolster up our fail-
ing courage, by dogmatizing about a divine being, who will do and
be for us, what we cannot do and be for ourselves. And we are
not even honest in our thoughts about the Deity we fable. Events
are daily happening which cannot be reconciled with our theory
of an omnipotent and benevolent ruler ; but rather than make
use of our god-given reason, and think for ourselves, we profess
a bland faith in the divine justice, and declare that what is, must
be right, because it is of God's ordaining. There is a good deal
of the Roman Catholic in each of us ; for just as the Catholic
evades the responsibility of forming his own opinions, by accept-
ing, in the place of his abdicated reason, an infallible church,
which thinks, prays, believes, atones for, and absolves him, so
we try to escape the questions which confront us, by referring
them back to that sort of dead-letter office, the will of an almighty
Creator, to which we relegate all the disquieting problems and
undelivered mental packets, for which we cannot find any place
in the sorting office of our reason. Our minds are like so many
oysters, each of which is perpetually perplexed with an unanswera-
ble problem in place of a grain of sand ; and as we cannot get
rid of the gritty cause of our uneasiness, we cover it over with a
coating of fine words and call it our conception of a God. I
look down at this marvellous body of mine, — these fingers which
open and shut at my bidding, these limbs which so anticipate my
wish, that they act in accordance with it, before I am aware
of having put my will into action, — and I look in at the mystery
of this strangely self-conscious shade — this * myself ' as I cail
it — which from behind the window curtains of a little chamber,
at the back of my eyes, looks out, unseen, upon the world, and I
ask myself who I am and where I c^me from ; and when I cannot
find an answer to my own question, I put it away from me unan-
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THE CONFESSIONS OF A SUICIDE. 245
swered, by falling back upon the figment of a divine Creator,
knowing all the time that to account for the unaccountable by
presupposing the existence of an infinite and omnipotent being,
brooding in lonely grandeur athwart the waste spaces of eternity,
or hovering, birdlike, over the world, as over a nest, and with
outstretched wings that span the universe, is but attempting to
dispose of one mystery by hiding it in the shadow of another, a
thousand-fold more unfathomable ; is but seeking to set the mind
at rest by asking it to believe something which is monstrously
incredible. Why should there be a Supreme Being ? Who gave
God the right to be God ? And is there any justice in one All-
greedy, All-grasping Power, arrogating omnipotence to him-
self ?"
He stooped, and, taking the open Bible from the chair, flung
it face downward upon the fire ; and as he did so, the picture
faded out and was succeeded by another.
*******
It was early summer, and two lovers were following a path
through a meadow thick-sown with tender corn, over which
there rose and sank, as the wind swept the tremulous sheen of
the emerald banner-blades to shivering silver, a soft and willowy
stirring, which was like the sigh of a soul passing out on its way
to God. The face of the man was the face of the lonely child
and of the lonely lad; and the face of the woman was the face
which had looked out at me that evening across the river. At
the sight of that face, the last of the pictures faded away, and I
was back in my room again, and reading the fatal letter ; I was
slinking doggedly on by street and crossing, with brain on fire,
and all my thoughts bent on ending my misery ; I stood upon
the bridge with hell in my heart, and hatred to God in my
thoughts ; and I was battling and beating for breath, fighting for
life, and clutching at the unsubstantial water in my drowning
agony. And then it seemed to me that I had drifted out into
the open sea, and lay buried beneath such intolerable weight of
water, that I could stir neither hand nor foot. I could see,
through a softened and subdued haze of greenish light which
swam around me, the little hollows and hills among the shingle
and shells, the banks of white and shelving sand; and overhead,
like a sheet of ice or silvered glass, the under side of the surface
of the sea. Bubbles floated upward from my mouth, and coated
this under side with shining pearls. Here and there the water-
atmosphere of this submarine world was shot with silvery streaks
and spears of refracted light ; and I could see filaments of sea-
weed combed out in long ribbons upon the water, and floating
and fluttering above me like emerald pennons streaming in a
breeze.
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246 THE ABENA.
After a time the weight upon my breast lightened, and finally
passed away into a dreamy peace. I closed my eyes, and a deli-
cious drowsiness stole over brain and limb. My body swayed in
unison with a gentle undulation in the water, as though the
kindly sea had stooped to clasp her strong arms around me, and
to rock me to sleep upon her breast. There was the singing as
of a sweet slumber song in my ears. One by one the record of
the years faded out from my brain. I was a lad — a child — a
babe. My cheek nestled against a warm, soft, pulsing bosom;
my brow was light-brushed by a waving ringlet, as lips, which
whispered a prayer that God would keep me innocent and pure,
were pressed upon mine. For one moment I opened my eyes to
look up into the beautiful face, and into the love-filled and lumin-
ous eyes of the young mother whom I had never seen ; and then,
with one deep sigh of infinite content, I closed my eyes and fell
into a dreamless slumber.
*******
Slowly but surely thought and sensation came back to me, and I
awoke, with a nameless horror at my heart, to find myself lying on
my back, and staring up fixedly at the ceiling of my own room —
the room in which I had received and read the letter, and which,
when I set out to take my life, I never expected again to see. I
strove to raise myself to a sitting posture ; but though my brain
was clear and active, I seemed to have lost all control over my
limbs. Next I tried to turn my eyeballs in their sockets, that I
might look around me ; but I found that they were stiff and set,
and that I had as little control over them as over my body.
And then a great cry of shuddering and unutterable horror welled
up in my heart ; but my drawn lips gave no utterance to it, for I
was lying dead in my coffin, and the footsteps of those who came
to bear me to the grave might, even then, be upon the stair.
For this is the judgment which awaits the suicide : that, though
he kills the corporal life, he cannot disentangle the dead body
from the living spirit, but must lie there a conscious corpse, aware
of the coming interment and decomposition, which he is power-
less to hinder or avert.
The will of God cannot by mortal cunning be evaded. The
Creator may not by his creature be outwitted and defied ; for our
life, as well as the length of it, is of God's and not of our ordain-
ing, and can be terminated, not by any act of ours, but only by
His decree.
At last the time came when I knew, by the rattling of the
earth upon the lid, that the coffin was being lowered into the
grave. I remember that then, when it was too late, God or the
Devil mocked me by restoring to me some measure of power over
my limbs, and that I clinched my hands, until the dry nails
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THE CONFESSIONS OF A SUICIDE. 247
peeled off like wound-scabs, and the putrid flesh fell away in
flakes from the bone.
" Kill me, O God ! " I shrieked. " Kill me, O God or Devil !
and I who curse thee now, will bless thee and worship thee —
thee God, or thee Devil, if thou wilt but kill me, and cast me out
into everlasting night I "
Like the rattling of teeth in a skull, my voice rattled from the
hollow sides of the coffin, and died away, unechoed, amid the
dull, dead walls of clay which closed me in ; and though I heard
the startled worms steal slavering from their banquet, neither
Hell nor Heaven gave answer to my prayer. Though there was
scarcely room to turn or move in the coffin, I managed, by one
supreme and frenzied effort, to double my straightened arms
with the fists under my chin and the elbows outward, and then,
with the superhuman strength of a madman, I strained against
the boards which shut me in. The strings of my eyeballs
cracked, but the oaken walls gave slightly, and as, once more, I
wrenched my arms apart and against the sides, there was a
sound of breaking timber, and — my God! — was it possible? —
light ! — light ! — and the light of day !
I was in a room — it looked like a hospital — and I heard the
sound of a voice : —
" He's had a hard time of it, doctor, but I think he's coming
round at last. Don't hand him over to the police, poor devil !
No one can swear it was suicide but me, and I'm damned if I'll
appear against him ! "
"It's a risky thing you're doing, my boy — condoning an
offence of that sort; but if he promises never to attempt any-
thing of the sort again, I'm willing to keep the secret."
And I promised.
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THE CHAKITIES OF DIVES.
BY A. B. CABMAN.
The clergyman had just raised his reposeful, mild face from
under cover of his delicately veined hand, behind which he had
been silently praying as the soul of John Parker passed away,
and said, in a rich voice, perfectly modulated to clerical -sym-
pathy, as in explanation of the physician's movement away from
the bed, " Our brother has gone." The wife's head sank lower
yet on the other side of the couch, as she let her silent crying
become more audible and visible. The assembled family stood
or kneeled in the hush of first grief, while the benevolent
though strongly marked face of the father lay white and
ghastly, in the relaxation of death, on the wrinkled pillow. A
friend left the room, with noiseless purpose ; and all knew, with
a shudder, that he had gone for the undertaker. Now a little
movement came into the group; and as the clergyman led the
heart-bleeding widow away, steadier hands came, and the elegant
chamber of death witnessed the beginning of the dread prepara-
tions of burial.
John Parker had been a philanthropic millionnaire, living well,
giving nobly, a prominent figure in a city church, and interested
in all good work ; and he had died amid an aroma of modern
evangelical religion, — hymn singing and prayer. But John
Parker need not be spoken of with the melancholy cadence of a
past tense. John Parker, at this moment of family grief, is ; and
is now treading the new paths of the new life beyond the veil.
By the time the streamer of crape had been formally attached to
the front door, and the business of mourning set about as the
mourning of such a man should be, John Parker, the real, the
ego, the immortal, — not the stiff mask that lay in the dark-
ened bed chamber, but John Parker himself, — was journeying
out into an unfamiliar land. Entirely lost at first, it was not
long until he fell in with other men, apparently bound, like him-
self, for some unknown realm in this gray waste of trackless space.
As if hardly knowing how it came about, quite a little com-
pany had soon come together out of the yielding mists, and under
a but half -realized guidance were travelling toward an unrevealed
rdomain. The talk, like that of chance travelling companions
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THE CHARITIES OF DIVES. * 249
meeting on board ship, was casual and shifty — now of this or
that topic of the world left behind, but constantly betraying an
intertwined desire and fear on the part of all to discuss the
possibilities of the future.
It occurred to John Parker, presently, that this was not the
attitude of mind for a man who had made his "calling and
election sure," and who had vouched for this assurance to " seek-
ing souls" for many a year. These other strangers might not
have, like himself, obtained " the priceless gift " and lived a life
full of charity and good works ; and, at all events, this was no
time, with the hazy unknown all about him, to lose Hold of the
anchor of faith. Putting the result of this thought into speech
in the exhortatory form so customary to him in life, he said : —
"Well, it is a great comfort to me, in this hour of trial, to
remember that my Master has enabled me to do much on earth
for His cause and people. I have not hesitated, and I thank
God for it, to use the means He has given me to help on His
work."
"Ah, yes!" said a scholarly looking old gentleman not far
from him, his face brightening up at this indirect avowal of a
future hope. " It is now that his charities come back to one with
interest. How true it is ! ' Cast thy bread upon the waters ! '
How true ! "
A heavy-browed man, with ponderous gait, looked up at this
with a new interest, and said : —
" Gentlemen, you are right. Now is the time that a fellow's
loans to God should fall due " —
He intended to say more, but the irreverence of the speech
struck him now as it had never done in his business office, and he
paused to try and better it. His mind found it hard, however,
to fall into the channels of speech he had always so rigorously
dammed up as but the runnels of " cant " ; and there was quite
a silence before John Parker again took up the theme. A little
more force and importance in his voice evinced his intention to
let the last speaker know that his blasphemy had shocked all
good men.
" A little over a year ago," he said, " I was divinely led and
enabled to build a new wing to the hospital in my city. It had
been long needed, for many poor patients had been turned away
of late and compelled to bear their infliction — heaven-sent, no
doubt, for their own good — in their — ah — very unsanitary
homes in the factory district."
Two tall, masterly figures were walking in the very front of
the little group, and one of them looked back at this for the first
time, but said nothing.
" God had prospered me exceedingly of late," went on John
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250 THB ARENA.
Parker, " and I fitted up this wing of the hospital with all the
modern appliances, and the clergy and the press thought it in
every way admirable. That great satisfaction should " —
But here the tall figure in the front, who had looked back,
spoke : —
" Did not God care to prosper the poor in the factory district? "
he asked.
There was silence for a moment; and then John Parker, wrap-
ping himself about a little more sternly in an invisible cloak of
authoritative mystery, replied : —
" The ways of Providence are inscrutable, my brother. We
cannot venture to interpret them."
"Ah! yes; and you must not forget, my friend," said an eager-
faced clergyman with wavy hair and quick, nervous hands, walk-
ing quite away at the other side from John Parker, and addressing
himself to the tall figure, "God does not will that all shall
prosper in worldly affairs. To some He gives riches ; to others,
knowledge ; and others, again, He chasteneth. Some must go
through the fires of affliction and poverty and suffering, that
they may come out as gold tried in the furnace."
But the tali figure had turned quietly away and moved on.
" Yes ; and I can tell you, my brother," said John Parker to the
clergyman, " that wealth brings perplexities and trials which are
quite as heavy as any the poorest can know."
A thinly clad woman, with a young though care-creased face,
who had shivered much at first, and whose finger tips were
dotted with needle wounds, looked up doubtfully at this ; but the
wan infant in her arms moved, and she forgot' the others in a
moment.
The scholarly old gentleman was the next to speak. "My
charities," he said, "have generally been given through the
church. There is a system about it there, and no undeserving
person gets too much. We have a committee, you know — you
can't do much without a committee — and 'visitors' who go
about to the paupers' houses, and then the approved families send
a member each Tuesday and Saturday to the charity office
to get bread or coals or a bowl of wholesome soup — very good
soup, indeed." And he smacked his lips like a zealous restau-
rateur recommending his cuisine.
A workman with sharp, rebellious eyes and a firm mouth drew
near at this, and asked, in a distinctly aggressive and quarrel-
some tone, " Did you never do nothin' to stop the manef actur' of
' pawper8,' as ye call 'em?"
" jf y J » 8a i<i the old gentleman, evidently startled. " I meant
no offence, sir ; no offence."
"J guess I'm bevond tato' pffence ? "sai4 the worfcman, in a
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THE CHARITIES OF DIVES. 251
hard voice and with a harder smile ; " and now thet we're all
out of the world, I guess I'd better keep out of this talk."
"No! no I my good man," said the old gentleman eagerly.
" I want to tell you what we did do in the way of giving work
to those who wanted it. We leased a yard and bought wood
and paid men by the cord for cutting it, and then sold the wood.
We tried oakum picking, too, but that did not pay very well."
The two stately figures in front, whom now all recognized to
be leading the party, looked toward one another when the old
gentleman was speaking, as if interchanging thought through the
eyes, and then the one who had spoken before turned and asked: —
" Is there a scarcity of work now on the earth ? "
" Oh, yes," rejoined the old gentleman, with a committee-room
air, "the 'out of works' make our most perplexing social
problem."
" The ' out of works ' ? " repeated the questioner, doubtfully.
" Ah ! you mean those who have secured taxing privileges, and
eat the food of others' raising."
The penetrating tones unnerved the "committee man," and
rendered his reply more like a student's answer than an expert's
dictum. " I mean those who are poor and are willing to work,
but can get none," he said.
" They can always till the soil," returned the stern, tall figure.
" Can they?" broke in the workman. " That's all you know
about it. There is no land to be had at livin' rates and within
livin' distance of a market."
The strong face of the stern questioner melted into the utmost
kindness at the interruption of the workman, jagged and hostile
as it was ; and something of a quizzical look came into his eyes
as he asked, with what seemed mock curiosity : —
" Is the earth so full, then ? "
" Full of rent-takers and mortgage-holders," growled the work-
man under his breath ; when John Parker, fearing that this ill-
informed stranger might take this answer literally and fail to
comprehend it, volunteered : —
" The most desirable farming lands have been taken up, you
will understand, sir. Somebody owns them, though they may
not use them."
Again the two leading figures exchanged that look which
seemed so full of speech for them both, and the spokesman
said: —
" It is the old trouble, then : the strong have usurped a taxing
power ; and though the poor do plenty of work — far too much
— the idle tax gatherers, like the old * publicans' and those
they served, reap the benefit. Your charities, my good friend,
only gave work to those who had fao much, Their nee4 ww
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252 THE ARENA.
justice* And as for land! You who had families, tell me this:
could one child at your table obtain a claim to more bread than
he needed, while another was hungry ? Bread, in that case, was
a father's gift. So is the land."
And the tall figure moved on again, and all was silent.
When their spirits had been revived a little by mutual experi-
mental and tentative chat, a tall, serious-faced gentleman, who
had hitherto not spoken, remarket that he was interested in the
educational work, and that he had given quite freely to it toward
the end of his life.
" That was my line too," said the heavy-browed man, who had
not spoken since he was so severely snubbed for his blunt pseudo-
blasphemy at the opening of the conversation.
The first speaker did not look as if he relished the coincidence,
but soon both got to telling the particulars of their beneficence.
The burly individual had favored mechanical and scientific
schools, while the serious-faced philanthropist had interested
himself exclusively in theological colleges. They had both
evidently been large and generous givers. Ever since the last
masterful interruption from the mysterious leading figures, they
had talked with an uneasy eye on their dim shapes through the
shadows, and were not startled, though none the less uneasy,
when the same one turned around.
" You gave away a great deal," he said, at length. " How did
you manage to earn it in a lifetime ? "
The burly gentleman plainly took this question at once to him-
self. He acted like a man who had answered such a query — at
least in the privacy of his own conscience — many times before.
" Well, they took my money, anyway, and were mighty glad to
get it," he blurted out, in conscious defiance. " I made it in
beer ; that's how I made it. And beer is one of God's good
creatures." And he looked around, challenging contradiction.
None came. Men do not willingly jostle each other when float-
ing on a few thin planks over an unknown sea. But the refusal
to be classed with this beer brewer shone unconquerable from
the faces of his fellow-philanthropists, and presently his serious-
faced colleague in the educational work said, with peculiar
emphasis, addressing markedly all but the man of malt : —
" My money was made legitimately in an honored business. I
was a maker of agricultural implements."
" So was I," laughed the keen-eyed workman ; and the laugh
jarred.
"A — eh — a manufacturer ? " asked the educationalist.
" No," returned the workman bluntly. "I did the work."
" That is — you — eh — you did the mechanical work," inter-
preted he of the serious face.
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THE CHAKITIES OF DIVES. 253
" That's what I said," was the reply. " I didn't have nothing
to do with tariffs nor taxing the farmers " — this with a swiftly
hostile glance — "nor searching out markets; I just made the
machines. I'm not sayin', ye'll understand," he went on, shaking
an argumentative finger, " that the manufacturer doesn't work ;
but he don't work any harder than I do, at least, than I did,"
remembering that he had lately changed worlds, " and I doubt,
if you count out as not true productive work the time he spends
raising prices and screwing down wages, whether he works as
hard as I do. And yet he makes millions ; and I " — his eyes
blazed red, and he gasped as he spoke — " well, my wife died of
consumption a year ago because I couldn't send her to a dry
climate ; and now I've folleyed."
u Ah ! you were a publican, then," said the tall figure from
the front* who had followed this speech carefully, addressing
the manufacturer. "You had a right to take taxes from the
farmers."
" Oh, no ! " expostulated the agricultural implement manufact-
urer. " We in our country had a protective tariff on agricultural
implements, it is true ; but if I had my price lists with me, I
could show you that it added very little to the cost of our imple-
ments to the farmers."
u And yet? said the tall figure, musingly, turning round again,
"the workmen are poor; the farmers are poor; and you make
millions"
And thus, as the time wore away, did others tell of the wealth
they had given to good causes or left behind them now at their
departure ; while about them, sad and mournful, countless figures
flitted in and out of the shadows, listening sometimes, but never
speaking ; for they had endowed no colleges, founded no chari-
ties, left no monuments ; done nothing upon earth but managed
to live, and that only in pain and penury. They came empty-
handed, and they were abashed at the " jewels " of good works
which the great ones of two worlds were carrying. Poverty on
earth had left them poor beyond it ; for in the crowded tenement
and on the barren fields, tempers had soured, intelligence had
been dimmed; love and gentleness and brotherly kindness —
what room had there been for the growth of these virtues in the
mad struggle for bread ? They had travelled " steerage " over
life's sea, and they were foul with the smells of it. There had
been time in the cabin for good deeds, for kindly courtesy,
for benevolence and religious service — they had even monopo-
lized the giving of a cup of cold water up there. But down in
the reeking hold of the ship, men fought like dogs for clean
water, that the fever-red lips of their babes might taste it.
Brute passions had sucked rank life out of the miasmic air, and
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254 THE ARENA.
their nerves had not ceased to throb with them yet. Envy had
grown into their natures; petty jealousies and class hatred, born
of class wrongs, had thrived, not to be put down even by the vis-
itation of Charity in furs, nor the erection of a special mission
chapel, where the Eidei Brother could be introduced to his
44 poorer relations." It was too terribly plain that there was no
escape from the heritage of poverty.
These two classes of beings, the philanthropists and the pau-
pers, were by no means the only figures that flitted through the
shadows ; for this scene on the farther side of the water-shed of
death was a world in misty miniature. Many other faces looked
out of the wreathed night shades — the close-lipped face that
neither asked nor gave quarter in the game of life ; the careless
face, now shadowed with apprehension; and very often the
unworldly face of one of the mutely following flock of the many
and varied religious shepherds. One of those latter, a patient
woman with suds-bleached fingers, disturbed by the stories of
good works told by the Parkers of the party, drew near, in sheer
wanton search for the help of the strong that she had always
yearned for in religious matters, to the tall figure in front who
had not spoken. Her story was that she had done nothing, while
these had done so much.
" My sister ! " said the voice of the figure, and it reached in
mellow cadence to the uttermost realms of shade, " you are only
like unto an unhappy One who lived long centuries ago near blue
Galilee, who gave nothing of man-made wealth, for He took
nothing"
And as He spoke, He raised a hand as if to bless the woman,
and the palm of it was drawn into a glassy scar. In a moment
He was gone ; and but one tall figure remained, and he was
an angel.
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WHO BKOKE UP DE MEET'N' f
A NEGRO CHARACTER SKETCH.
BY WILL ALLEN DROMGOOLB.
Aunt Sylvia told the story, as she sat on the doorstep one
soft afternoon in June. She had come to return the " cup o'
corn meal " she had borrowed a few days before ; and while resting
a moment, she related the story of the a scan'l " that had " broke
up de meet'n', de big meet'n' ober at de Pisgy meetV house,
an' tuk Brudder Simmons inter de cote, an' plumb made dey all
furgit all about de feet-washin' what dey alius winds up de big
meet'n' wid, ever' onct a year."
a A * feet- washing ' ? What is a * feet- washing ' for, Aunt
Sylvia?" I asked.
"De Lor', honey, don't you know? But den I furgit you's a
Meferdis', en de f eet-washin's am Babtis'. De Mef erdis', dey habe
de fallin' fura graces instid. Well, honey, it's dis er way. De
sacerment, hit's fur de cleanin' ob de soul ; de feet-washin', hit's
fur de cleanin' ob de body"
"Ah! I see. And did the < feet- washing ' break up the
meeting ? " I asked, somewhat startled at this unusual interpre-
tation of the Scriptures. She laughed; her fat, black face
dropped forward, her eyes closed, her body swinging in that
odd way which belongs solely to her race.
"De feet-washin' break up de meet'n'? Naw, honey, dat it
didn't, dat it didn't."
"Then what did?"
"Dat's it I" she exclaimed, " dat's dest it Dat's dest what we
all wants to know. Dat's what de cote wanted ter know ; who
broke up de meeirCf Some sey hit uz Brer Ben Lytle; en
some sey hit uz Brer Ike Martin ; en some sey hit uz de widder
Em'line Spurlock ; en some sey hit uz jes' Ike's fise dorg ; end en
ag'in some sey hit uz de singin' ; some sey de preacher hisse'f done
it; en some sey dis en some sey dat, till dey fetches it ter de cote.
En de cote figgered en figgered on it, en den it sey 'cord'n' ter
de bes' hit kin extrac' fum de eminence befo' it, wuz dat de one
ez broke up de meet'n', en oughter be persecuted en incited by
de gran' jury fur de disturbmint ob de public worshup, am ole
Mis' Goodpaschur's big domernicker rooster, what nobody aint
never s'picioned, case'n o' hit livin' 'way cross de creek, on de
side todes de railroad, wid ole Mis' Goodpaschur. En de cote, hit
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256 THE AEENA.
noller prostituted de case agin de preacher, what de sisters
inferred aginst him in dey charges ; en dey tuk en laid hit on de
domernicker instid.
" Hit uz dis erway : You see, Ike Martin, he wuz 'gaged ter
chop wood fur Mis' Goodpaschur, 'count o' lett'n' uv him haul
ofifn her Ian'. Ike, he gits a load fur ever' load he cuts. En hit
'pears in de eminence how Ike went by ter cut some wood mighty
early in de mawnin', de day ob de feet-washin', 'count o' goin' ter
meet'n'. En he fotched little Eli, his boy, 'long wid 'im ter pick
up de chips, case'n Mis' Goodpaschur alius gibs de chile a bite
o' warm bre'kfus' when he pick up de chips fur her, seein' ez
Ike aint got no wife ter cook fur him. En Eli he fotched his
fise dog — thinkin' 'bout de bre'kfus', I reckin. En Mis' Good-
paschur, she axed Eli ter keep off de calf off. En while Eli, he uz
wraslin' wid de calf, en nobody ain' never thought ob de
domernicker up in de yaller peach tree, all 't onct dar wuz a
mighty fluster up ober dey haids, en de big domernick come
teetlin' en clawin' down on ter de roof ob de cow-shed wid a
pow'f ul healfy * How-dy-do-oo-hoo ! '
" Ole Mis' Goodpaschur, she uz dat upsot she tumbled offn de
railkin' stool, forrards agin' de cow ; en de cow, she kicked little
Eli in de haid, en Eli, he hollered till his daddy come ter see de
incasion' ob de fuss. En he tell Eli ter shet up ; but he say he
ain' gwine shet up tell he kill dat cow; he say he ' boun' ter bus'
it wide op'n.'
" En den Mis' Goodpaschur, she say she sholy have him tuk up
en jailed ef he tetch dat ar cow. En so Ike he tuk en tuk Eli off
ter de feet-washin' fur ter keep 'im out o' mischeef.
" En de fise dog, hit went 'long too wid Eli, 'cause dat dog sho'
gwine whar Eli go. En dat's jes' how it all come 'bout ; ef dey
all hadn't come ter meet'n', ober ter Pisgy, dey ain' been no fuss,
en no scan'l, en no talk.
" De domernick skeered ole Mis', ole Mis' skeered de cow, de
cow kicked Eli, Eli hollered fur his daddy, his daddy tuk him ter
de meet'n' ! en dar wuz de fuss all wait'n' en raidy.
" 'Twuz de big meet'n', hit ez don't come 'cep' onct a year.
Brudder Simmons wuz holdin' foath, en jes' a-spasticerlatin' ter
de sinners en denunciat'n' ob de Scriptures. En he wuz jes'
p'intedly gibbin' de gospil, bilin' hot, ter de gals en boys, de
ongodly young folks ez wuz at de dancin' party down ter
Owlsley's Holler de night befo'.
" Dey uz all dar, gigglin' en actin' mighty bad. En de preacher,
he telled how he rid froo de Holler goin' ter Brudder Job Saw-
yer's house fur ter put up, en he heeard de trompin' en de singin',
en he telled 'em how bad it all sound. He sey, dey uz singin'
somefn bout " Granny, nil yo dog bite." Een he mek de p'int ter
tell 'em uv dat ez'll bite more badder en any dog — it air de
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WHO BROKE UP DE MKFJVK'? 257
wraf ! de wraf ter come ! de fire dat'll burn, en burn, en neber
stop burnin'.
44 En the Chrischuns, dey wuz seyin' 4 Amen ! ' en dest waitin'
wid dey mouf wide op'n fur de trumpit ter blow fur ter start 'em
all home todes de glory. En dar wuz de sinner convicted, moanin',
wait'n fur de call ter resh ter de moaners' bench. En dar wuz
de dancin' crowd, col', col', col' ez ice, and not thinkin' ob de
jedgmint day. Yes, dey wuz all dar — de worP, de flesh, en de
debbul, Ireckin.
44 En dar wuz de moaners' bench — fur de f eet-washin', hit come
las' — en de moaners' bench wuz dar, stretched plumb crost de
house, wid some clean straw thowed roun' bout'n it fur de con-
solerdation ob dem ez wuz come ter wras'le like Marse Jacob.
44 En Ike, he uz dar, en Eli uz dar, en — de fise dog uz dar. Yes,
de fise uz behavin' mighty well ; a pow'ful frien'ly, onhankerous
lookin' little critter, curled up om de fur eend ob de moaners'
bench jes' in front ob Eli, en not seyin' a blessed word ter 'sturb
nobody. En de widder Spurlock, she uz dar, im her new moanin'
dress en a raid ribbin in her bonnit. She done been sett'n' up
ter Ike eber sence his 'oman died; en Eli, he jes' p'intedly
c&spises de groun' she tromps on.
44 Waal, den, when Brudder Simmons, he begin ter exterminate
de Chrischuns ter go out inter de byways en de hedgerows, en ter
furrit out de sinners en impel 'em ter come inter de gospul feast,
ever'body knowed he uz talkin' 'bout de boys en gals what
danced 4 Granny, ull yo doe bite ' all de night befo'. Ever'body
knowed dat, inspecting ob ae widder Spurlock ; she plumb mistuk
do meanin' ob de call. Fur 'bout dat time, some ob de wraslin'
ones down 't de fur eend ob de moaners' bench fum der fise, foun'
grace, en begin ter shout, en ter claw de a'r, en ter roll in de
straw like.
44 De fise he looked up, much ez ter sey, 4 What dat mean ? *
44 En den Mis' Spurlock, she jumped up, flung off her bonnit, en
wen' tarin' cross de house ter whar Ike wuz sett'n' by Eli on de
bench.
44 Down she flopped, en flung hersef onter Ike's shoulder en
begin ter holler, 4 Glory I glory ! Bress de Lord ! I loves ever'-
body, ever'body, ever body I' en jes' poundin' Ike on de
back lack same's he uz a peller, else a bolster she uz beat'n' up.
44 De fise dog riz ter a sett'n' poscher, sett'n' on de hin' laigs,
his tail sorter oneasy like, en his mouf workin*.
44 Den I see Eli lean ober en put his mouf ter de fise's year, 'en
sey, sorter easy like, sez he, ''S-i-c-Jc J imf Land o' Moses! ef
dat dog didn't fa'rly fly. He danced, en he yelped, en he barked,
en he barked. He lit inter dat widder-oman like a mad hornet.
I tell yer, he made de fur fly. En den dat Eli, he jes' tilted ob
his haid back en faffed out loud.
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258 THE ARENA.
44 De gals f um Owlsley's Holler giggled, en de moaners peeped
fum behin' dey's han'kercheefs ter see what uz de matter; en
eben one ob de dekuns hisse'f smiled, while Brer Ben Lytle, ez
wuz kerzort'n' ob de moaners, he jes' drapped down in de straw
en roared till he had ter hoi' his sides, fur ter keep fum bust'n'
wide op'n. Yer could a heeard him hafPn a mile, I reokin.
44 Dar wuz one didn't laff ; dat uz Brer Simmons. He jumped
up quick ez he could, en sez he : —
444 Sing somethin';' thinkin' ter drown out the fuss. 4 Sing,
bredderin ! Sing dat good ole song, " Granny, will yo' dog bite."
44 En afore he could see what he had sed, dem Owlsley Holler
gals set up ter singin', loud nuff ter raise de daid, while de boys,
dey begin ter pat : —
Chippie on de railroad,
Chippie on de flo\
Granny, will yo' dog bite?
No, chile, no I
44 Brudder Simmons' eyes look lack dey boun' ter pop out'n his
haid ; he lifted up his han' up, so, en motion 'em ter stop. But
dat only mek dey all ter sing de more louder, en ter pat de more
harder : —
'Possum up a 'simmon tree,
Oh, my Joe !
Granny, will yo 1 dog bite?
No, chile, not
44 Den de Chrischuns, dey got mad. Dey 'low Brudder Simmons
been et de dance his own se'f, else dat song wouldn't slip ofFn his
mouf so 'ily. Dey wuz plumb scan'lized. Dey wuz, shore. En
someun sey, out loud : —
44 4 Put 'im out ! Put him out I ' En de word uz tuk up by de
whole band o' Chrischuns, exclud'n' de very moaners deyse'ves.
En afore he knowed it dey jes' lit inter 'im, drug him out'n de
pulpit, en pitched him out'n de meet'n' house door, en shet it to,
in his face, namin' ob him all de time fur a Joner. En den dey
fotched it up in de cote, persecuted ob de preacher fur disturbin'
ob public worship. Dey sho' did.
44 En when dey fotched it up, de preacher sey he ain' done it.
Den de cote p'intedly ax, 4 Who bruk up de meet'n' ? ' En some
sey dis un, en some sey dat, en dey all sey dey reckin de preacher
wuz de mo8* ter blame — de witnesses all sey dat.
44 But Brudder Simmons, he sey he didn' mean ter gib out dat
song. He uz dest a-thinkin' about dat wicked dance dey all been
habin' in de Holler, en he uz frustrated by de fise dog barkin', en
when he went ter sey 4 Sing dat good ole song, " Gret God, dat
awful day ob wraf," he furgot, en sed, " Granny, will yo' dog bite,"
bein' frustrated 'bout de fise en de dance.'
44 So den de cote axed him, 4 Who bruk up de meet'n' ? ' En he
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WHO BROKE UP DB MEET'n'? 259
sey ef he bleeged ter lay de blame he ud lay it ter de dog. He
sey de fise dog bruk up de meet'n'. Den I gibs my intestiment,
en I sey it wuzn't de dog, it uz Eli fur sickin' on de dog, 'case I
heeard 'im. En Eli he sey it uz de widder Em'line Spurlock fur
huggin' ob his pappy. En de widder sey it uz Ike fur fetchin'
Eli ter meet'n'. En Ike sey it uz ole Mis' Goodpaschur fur tryin'
ter jail Eli, else he wouldn't a-fotched de chile ter meet'n'.
44 Mis' Goodpaschur sey it uz Eli, fur sayin' he 'u'd kill de cow.
" En Eli, he sey de cow uz ter blame fur kickin' uv 'im, en ole
Mis' Goodpaschur fur kickin' ob de cow.
u En den ole Mis' Goodpaschur, she sey t'wuz de domernicker
crowed on de roof ez skeered her o£Pn de stool en made her
bump ag'inst de cow.
44 Now, den ! de cote hit sey de eminence am all in, en it begin
ter argerfy de case. En it argerfied might'ly ; do de lawyers kep'
a-laffin' en laffin', tell de judge shuk a stick at 'em ; en he hit on
de pulpit ob de cote-room wid it, en looked mighty ser'us, where
his mushtash didn't shake, lack it sorter done.
" En one ob de lawyers riz up en made out de case : —
44 4 De rooster crowed ! ole mis' jumped ag'in' de cow ; de cow
kicked Eli; Eli want ter kill de cow ; ole mis' want ter jail Eli ;
Ike f otched him ter meet'n', wid de dog ; de widder hugged Ike ;
de dog bit de widder; de gals laffed; de preacher gin out de
wrong chune ; de sisters fit de preacher, en de meet'n' bruk up.
En now,' sez he, 4 who bruk up de meet'n' ? '
44 Den de judge riz up, en sez he, 4 Ef de preacher hadn't gib
out de wrong chune de gals wouldn't a-sung it.
44 4 De preacher wouldn't done it ef de dog hadn't barked.
44 4 De dog wouldn't barked ef Eli hadn't sicked 'im on.
44 4 Eli wouldn't set 'im on ef de widder hadn't hugged his
daddy.
44 4 De widder wouldn't done dat ef he ud stayed et home wid
Eli.
44 4 Ef he'd stayed at home wid Eli, ole Mis' Goodpaschur 'u'd put
Eli in jail.
44 4 Ole Mis' Goodpaschur wouldn't do dat ef he hadn't sey he
'u'd kill de cow.
44 4 He wouldn't sey dat ef de cow hadn't kicked 'im.
44 4 De cow wouldn't kicked 'im ef ole mis' hadn't kicked de
cow.
44 4 Ole mis' wouldn't done dat ef de domernicJc hadn't crowed
on de roof?
44 Den de judge sey, 4 Wid all de eminence afore me, de exclu-
sion reached am dat de domernicker am de culvert, en de case
ag'inst de defender am noller prostituted.'
44 En 7" sey ef de domernick am de culvert, lack he sey, den
w/u> broke up de meet'n' ? "
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PURE DEMOCRACY VERSUS VICIOUS GOVERN-
MENTAL FAVORITISM.
BY B. O. FLOWER.
A contribution from the pen of Mr. F. B. Tracy * appeared
in a recent number of the Forurn^ entitled " Menacing Socialism
in the Western States," which is worthy of notice, as the subject
matter is a magazine presentation of views which have been pro-
mulgated by editorial alarmists among conservative writers for
many months, and because it affords an opportunity to state
some fundamental distinctions between the views entertained by
two important schools of economic reformers to-day, and the great
issue made by both against the present system of governmental
favoritism. The confusion which exists in the minds of many
as to the radical distinction between progressive individualists
and nationalistic socialists is largely due to the fact that up to a
certain point both journey together, although they arrive at
the same conclusion from entirely different premises.
The wonderful strength manifested in the revolt f of the think-
ing toilers against a formidable threefold opposition — that of the
* We are Informed by the editor of the Forum that Mr. Tracy is an editorial con-
tributor to the Omaha Bee. and that he contributes to other dailies, and this may
account for his revamping the old-time cry which has so often in the past served to
deceive the unthinking voter. " In a few years," he assures his readers, " the wealth
of the trans-Mississippi commonwealths win be the boast of the nation."
t It is rather significant that a movement which in February, 1992, was contemptu-
ously denounced by such a staunch reflector of present unjust conditions as the New
York Times (see editorial in New York Times, Feb. 26, 1892), as a movement which
would make less impression in the ensuing presidential election than any third party
within the memory of the oldest living American, and which was inferentially desig-
nated as an association of " knaves and fools," should now force from an equally
strong representative of conservatism in review literature such a panicky paper as Mr.
Tracy's, in which we are gravely informed that, after the Omaha Convention, " Over
all the city during the succeeding months brooded the spectre of nationalism, social-
ism, and general discontent.** And, further, this special pleader for conservatism
seriously informs us that " Unless the spread of socialism is checked, one of two con-
ditions will appear: One is thorough paternalism of our government ; the other is the
political separation of the West from the East. It may impress some persons
strangely that an eminently conservative review should publish such intemperate
expressions as appear in this paper, the following being an apt example : " that furi-
ous and hysterical arraignment of the present times, that incoherent intermingling of
Jeremiah and Bellamy, referring to the Omaha platform.
A few weeks ago the readers of the daily press throughout the East were regaled
with a lurid description of the revolutionary condition of Kansas, given out at Wash-
ington by a representative of those who favored paternalistic favoritism in govern-
ment, as opposed to " special privileges to none. These are by no means isolated
examples of what seems to be a systematic attempt on the part of those who, however
much they may disclaim the intention, are conveying very unjust and false concep-
tions to the masses of people in the East, by use of intemperate and contemptuous
epithets, and through misrepresentation as to the real condition of the West, and the
alms and desires of a large proportion of the most thoughtful people of our land.
260
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EDITORIAL. 261
practical politicians of both the great parties, the great daily
press, and intrenched monopoly — challenges an honest hearing
and a fair presentation.
The contention calls to mind many notable straggles in the
past, and reminds us of the significant observation of Buckle, that
"JVb great political improvement, no great reform, either legisla-
tive or executive, was ever originated in any country by its rulers. n
We are gravely informed by Mr. Tracy that what he regards
as dangerous socialism is not confined to the People's Party of
the West, but has permeated both the Republican and Demo-
cratic parties. That such discontent as is intimated exists, no
careful student of social problems, acquainted with Western and
Southern politics, can doubt ; and that a large proportion of the
members of the old parties are in sympathy with the People's
Party, in its central demands, is doubtless equally true ; but I
am satisfied that Mr. Tracy makes a grave mistake when he iden-
tifies the great popular uprising of the South and West — which
is, I believe, destined to triumph — with the socialism advocated
by the German school of socialists. I am thoroughly convinced,
from a careful study of this movement from its early days, that
the great revolution now in progress is individualistic in the
what the broadest sense of that much-abused term.
popular revolt It is a revolt of the millions against the
really is. assumption of paternal authority on the
part of the general government, and the prostitution of this
authority or power for the enriching of a favored few. It is the
life cry of a half-strangled republic, in which, through class leg-
islation, a once popular government is rapidly passing into the
absolute control of moneyed aristocracies and privileged classes,
who, being the beneficiaries of the government, have acquired
colossal fortunes at the expense of the toiling millions.
the spirit of the The spirit of this great movement which
movement has crystallized into the People's Party is
is democratic. unmistakably democratic in the truest and
broadest sense of the word. Its advent was occasioned by the
presence of giant evils resulting from governmental paternalistic
power exerted in behalf of special classes, and its central demand
is " Equal opportunities to all, and class privileges to none." It
is a revolt of intelligence and industry against injustice and
favoritism. It is not only republican in character, but is in
many respects the most remarkable movement in the history of
the republic. I have observed its growth and tendencies with
profound interest, and I am convinced that it is not only the
most purely democratic party in America to-day, but that it
possesses a moral energy not present in the spoils-seeking parties.
I believe it contains in the South and West far more true Jeffer-
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262 THE ARENA.
sonian Democrats and Lincoln Republicans than can be found in
either of the parties which uphold special privileges and class
legislation, and which yearly vie with each other in the lavish
expenditure of hundreds of millions of the people's money.
The central demands of this movement, which is silently but
steadily growing throughout the republic, are in alignment with
pure republicanism ; and, indeed, it is the one great power which
menaces a system of paternal governmental favoritism, which,
unless clucked, will destroy every vestige of free government save
the shell.
It is individualistic, rather than socialistic, if we use the term
" socialistic " in the sense implied by Mr. Tracy, which contem-
plates the German ideal of absolute paternalism, or what in
America is known as nationalism, a fair idea of the ideal side of
which is broadly outlined in Mr. Bellamy's " Looking Backward."
POPULAR CONFUSION IN But J U8t here %l } wfll *» Wel J l ? P aUS6 a
begabd to the moment over this word "socialism," ow-
meaning of the term ing to a confusion existing in the public
socialism. mind regarding this term, which is lead-
ing thousands of people to confound the most pronounced and
consistent individualist with the most ultra socialist. Thus many
English writers invariably refer to Mr. Henry George as a
socialist; and in the minds of many who do not study social
problems, all persons who believe in the taxation of land values
and governmental ownership of the "natural monopolies" are
socialists, although the position of the single taxers is the most
purely individualistic of any body of economists, excepting those
who adhere to the views of philosophic anarchy. The single
taxers hold, on the one hand, that the land, like the air and water,
is the common gift of the beneficent Creator to all his children,
and that primarily from it man must obtain his physical suste-
nance, while on the other hand its increase in value is dependent
upon society. Hence they insist that it is eminently just and
proper that the community should receive a return from the
individual for the values accruing from the use of this common
gift, whose value the community enhances. This method of taxa-
tion, they claim, would be scientific and just, in perfect alignment
with the law of equal freedom, and that it would impose no
fine on industry, as does the present method; while it would
destroy the possibility of acquiring fortunes through unearned
increment and speculation in land, and render it unprofitable for
men or syndicates to hold mining lands idle. They are, above
all other leading reformers, pledged to the abolition of all special
privileges, and to the maintenance of individual freedom. They
hold that the evils of the present are the result of special privi-
leges, and that, other things being equal, where justice and
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EDITORIAL. 263
the widest freedom exist we must necessarily find the greatest
progress, and the most perfect development of manhood. They
point oat the important faet that all the great progressive steps
taken by humanity have at first been considered by the masses
as heresies worthy of suppression. Thus they insist upon the
maintenance of freedom in its truest sense, and in the name of
freedom demand that all special privileges be abolished ; or, to
use Mr. George's exact words, " They would take from the com-
munity simply that which belongs to the community, the value
which attaches to land by the growth of the community, leave
sacredly to the individual that which belongs to the individual,
and treat necessary monopolies as functions of the state." *
There are hundreds of thousands of people who believe
most strongly in governmental ownership of the railway and
telegraph, and who are resolute in their advocacy of the state
and municipal ownership of those great monopolies which nat-
urally belong to the community in common, as public lighting,
water supply, street franchises, etc., but who are unalterably
opposed to governmental interference with the individual free-
dom of the citizen in the honorable pursuance of any lawful
avocation. People holding these views are much truer represen-
tatives of democracy than those who uphold special privileges of
any kind whatsoever, on the one hand, or those who, on the other
hand, would place every printing-press in the land in the posses-
sion of the government, and make every citizen a part of a machine,
to be controlled and made subject to laws enacted by the majority
of the citizens, who, unless transformed in nature, would soon
become the prey of wily classes, who would control government,
and, with a printing-press under their autocratic sway, would be
far better able to compass their ends than any aristocracy, fed on
special privileges, is to-day.
My investigations have satisfied me that a very large majority
of the people who are now in revolt against the old parties
belong to those who demand the abolition of all special privileges,
the control by the people of natural monopolies in the interest
of individual freedom, and for the protection and service of the
individual, but who are unalterably opposed to what has been
termed military or compulsory socialism, in contra-distinction to
voluntary socialism.
Here, then, are the points of agreement and disagreement
between the two schools. The individual-
P °™™ msAQB^^m i8tic ^former, who, like Jefferson, has faith
between individual- in freedom when no class is privileged or
istic and socialistic protected, demands : —
reformers. (j) The abolition of all special privi-
• «* Condition of Labor," p. 68.
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264 THE ARENA.
leges. (2) The city, state, or national ownership of what are
popularly termed " natural monopolies," that the freedom of
the individual may be better conserved. Now the socialist (using
the term in the strict 6ense implying absolute paternalism) also
demands these radical changes, and works with the individual-
ists, although with different ends in view, since he regards the
accomplishment of these measures as stepping-stones likely to
lead to a more complete system of governmentalism, in which
things will be automatically arranged by laws enacted by the
majority of the people. Thus, though the ultimate in view is
radically different, both these schools are a unit on the supreme
issues of the hour — the abolition of all special privileges, and
the governmental control of natural monopolies ; and, indeed, many
of the ablest socialistic leaders urge that nothing beyond these
demands be advanced at present, for they hold that socialism
can only be successfully introduced in a gradual manner, as
humanity comes to recognize the necessity for each step.*
Here, then, lies the fundamental difference between the two great
schools of political reformers, which the present unjust conditions
have called forth in the republic. In both ranks may be found
chosen spirits, men of splendid intellectual power, who are moved
by the highest altruistic sentiments. But I believe that a very
large majority * of those who to-day demand the abolition of all
class legislation and the control of natural monopolies by the
people, occupy the individualist's position, believing t/iat icith
comparative equality of opportunities, freedom will accomplish
the rest; while a second class demand these first, but aver that
should these fail then they would favor the socialistic alterna-
tive ; a third class, constituting, I think, a very small proportion,
would push their views to the extreme of absolute paternalism
with all possible speed.
The burden of Mr. Tracy's argument is that this movement is
unrepublican ; that it is a menace to free government. In a
word, to use his exact language, it is " social lunacy." It is not
my purpose to indulge in epithets of contempt. ' I wish, rather,
* During the past year I have taken pains to inquire of scores of analytical,
thoughtful, and in every way representative thinkers in the present industrial revolu-
tion as to whether they would favor the press of the land passing into the absolute
control of the government, even if the government represented a large majority of
the citizens; and in every instance, with two exceptions, they have answered in the
negative. In various other ways I have sought to catch with certainty the drift of this
current, and I am thoroughly convinced that the spirit of this wonderful industrial
movement is individualistic in the highest sense, and that it is headed toward a nobler
freedom than has ever before been realized.
Furthermore, it is not strange that in an attempt to correct the great wrongs which
have resulted from governmental favoritism or class legislation, by which a few have
been enormously benefited, some legislators have erred in seeking similar artificial or
unrepublican means to aid millions who have suffered at the expense of the favored.
But these exceptions to the rule do not represent the trend or spirit of this movement,
and would not deceive any thoughtful, unprejudiced person who had carefully studied
the spirit of the revolt. The present social revolution is a war against special privi-
leges. It is a conflict for individual freedom no less than a battle of the masses
against the classes for justice and equality of opportunity.
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EDITORIAL. 265
to point out in as few words as possible the real grounds for the
deep-rooted discontent of our day, and thereby show that this
industrial revolution is founded upon a clear perception of evils,
and an irrevocable determination to abolish them, that liberty may
be preserved.
The past thirty years might justly be termed the era of
olass legislation. Shrewd men banded
cla™1kgisl1tion. together from time to time, and captured
state legislatures and the United States
Congress. In each instance their plans were plausibly presented,
strong lobbies worked, and not infrequently tools of the business
combinations were elected to Congress or the Senate ; and unfort-
unately, these methods were often the least demoralizing em-
ployed. Hence the great land grants and subsidies were given
away by the government with criminal recklessness,* and without
any wise provision looking to the interests and protection of the
people. Now, while it is conceivable that a statesman might
conscientiously believe it wise to favor a grant of land to a rail-
way corporation, to aid in the construction of a railroad to some
remote part, as, for example, to the Pacific Coast, it is difficult
to see how any single-minded and far-seeing statesman could
have favored the giving away of vast domains of fertile land, as
well as enormous amounts of the people's money, to pay for the
construction of railroads, without, on the other hand, making
provisions which would prevent the toiling millions from becom-
ing the helpless victims of corporate greed, instead of the
beneficiaries of governmental concessions. If the government
had forbidden the inflating or watering of stock, and had pro-
vided that only equitable freight and passenger rates should be
levied, there might have been some justification for the action
of our lawbreakers. Unfortunately, however, the government
• A striking illustration of this point is found in the following simple statement
of the Union Pacific Railroad made by Honorable S. S. King in his admirable work
•• Bond Holders and Bread Winners " : •• During the warfthe beginning of the era of
corruption) the Union Pacific Railway was conceived. The National Legislature bad
chartered the company and given it 20,000,000 acres of land. Hut the subsidy was not
enough to Ratify the eastern capitalists. Then Congress offered to loan the company
for each mile of road built, $16,000 a mile over the prairie country, $32,000 a mile over
the mountain sloiies, and $4«,ooo over the mountains. Here was land worth $50,000,000.
estimating it at $2.50 per acre, or werth 9100,000.000, estimating it at its selline price of
$5 per acre. The loan offered was more than $00,000,000. Did the eastern millionnaires
accept the offer? No. Why? Because they knew they owned Congress and could get
a better deal : and they did get a better one. Congress then offered to give them all
this land, ana loan them all this money, and in addition thereto allow the company to
issue first mortgage bonds and sell to other eastern capitalists to the same amount jkt
mile as the government loan — $l«,ooo, $32,000, and $48,000 —the eastern capitalists to
have the first lien, and the government the second lien. This offer was accepted and
work began. Eastern capitalists now took hold of the vast enterprise, putting lens
than a Quarter million of their own capital into it. Estimates showed that the build-
ing of the road would cost less than the money loaned by government, saying nothing
of the value of the lands. It was built, and the patriots who built it divided among
themselves, as profits during the building, more than $100,000,000, with all their land
left! To-day the Union l*acinc Railroad owes the national government in principal
and interest more than $130,000,000 ! Ahead of the government lien is a mortgage to
eastern capitalists for more than the road is worth. 1 *
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266 THE ARENA.
assumed the attitude of a viciously partial and recklessly prodi-
gal parent, giving, without restriction, El Doradoes of wealth to
special classes, and leaving the millions of her struggling children
to suffer in future years, that conscienceless railroad monopolies
might water stock many times over, and compel the farmer and
consumer to earn interest on this inflated stock, that gamblers
and speculators might realize millions of acquired money. On
this point the position of the People's Party may be briefly
stated as follows: —
The rights of the people have been infringed upon ; nothing
is clearer than that the masses have suffered great injustice, that
a few might acquire millions and thus corrupt government. In-
dividual rights, which should have been carefully guarded by a
government pretending to be a democracy, have been ruthlessly
disregarded. Now, to secure the equal freedom and justice which
are due to all citizens of the republic, let the great arterial and ner-
vous system of the nation pass into the hands of the government ;
that no longer the producer, on one hand, and the consumer, on
the other, be plundered, to enable a few score of men to squander
millions of acquired wealth in Europe, or to further prostitute
legislatures at home, with wealth which has been acquired, not
earned. In treating these " necessary monopolies as functions of
the state," the freedom of the individual will be preserved, justice
accorded the producer and consumer, and the net earnings will go
to the people, instead of further enervating a mushroom aristoc-
racy, who regard gambling in Wall Street as legitimate business,
and whose highest social aim is to indulge in criminal ostentation,
and ape the corrupt aristocracies of European monarchies. There
is nothing in this proposition which is undemocratic. On the other
hand, it is eminently republican, for it seeks to protect the citizen
in his earnings from the rapacity of a privileged class, and to
enable the consumer to enjoy the product of labor, without having
unjust tributes levied to swell the purses of the few who are be-
coming Croesuses through special privileges.
Another illustration of this vicious gov-
another example of ernmental favoritism is seen in the special
special privileges. privilegeg grante( i ^ t h e bankers; class
privileges, which, in the end, must compel the people to pay a
double tribute to a small class. For it must be remembered that
the government pays a larger interest to the banker on the bond
held as security, than the banker pays for the use of the national
bills he receives, and on these bills the banker is enabled to levy
a princely tribute from the people.* Here again, in the granting
* It was to relieve millions of people from the great injustice resulting from this
usury which led to the demand for the sub-treasury plan as a method of disseminating
a medium of exchange based on actual values, and received by the tollers without
their having to yield the fruit of their toil to the government's pampered and specially
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EDITORIAL. 267
of these privileges, we find another example of class legislation,
which carries seeds fatal to pure democracy.
On the question of money, the People's Party stands unalter-
ably for the abolition of the national banks. It fully agrees
with the vast majority of sober thinkers, that any return to the
irresponsible system of state banks, which proved so disastrous in
the past, would be an exhibition of political folly, little short
of criminality. It admits that the national bank bill is a safe
money, because the national government makes it safe. It rec-
ognizes the right to issue money a legitimate function of the
national government, but it opposes the government giving a
monopoly in money to speculative syndicates, who farm it out in
such a way as to take from labor the fruit of its hands.*
Now the People's Party demands that the government issue
the money directly to the people. They also favor governmental
savings banks in connection with the postal department, which
shall be absolutely safe depositories for the people's savings.
demoralizing influ- The instances cited of railway and finan-
ence of class cial legislation in favor of classes are fair
legislation. examples of a most vicious species of legis-
lation which has flourished during the past generation, and which
rests upon the assumption, first, that the government had the right
to assume paternal function ; and second, that she could in this
rCle lawfully discriminate in favor of small classes, and thus
utterly disregard the fundamental rights of the majority of her
citizens. It is a noteworthy fact that the very people who are
loudest in their denunciations of governmental control of "natural
monopolies" as paternalistic, have amassed fortunes from the
favored class. This plan, while open to grave objections, is incomparably more demo-
cratic than the present vicious system, for it would provide for the government issuing
money on real values, thus securing the promise to pay, and it would abolish the
objectionable features of the national banking system, whereby the people who sow
and who reap are at the mercy of the usurer enjoying special privileges from the
government.
• On this point General Weaver, the late candidate of the People's Party for presi-
dent, pertinently remarks : " Our national banking system is the result of a compact
between Congress and certain speculative syndicates, Congress agreeing to exercise the
power to create the money, to bestow it as a gift, and to enforce its circulation ; while
the syndicates are to determine the quantity, and say when it shall be issued and
retired. No currency whatever can be issued under this law unless it is first called for
by associated usurers, and then they may retire it again at pleasure. If they decline
to call for its issue, the affliction must be borne. If issued, and speculators desire to
destroy it, the disastrous sacrifice must be endured. The power of the government to
issue lies dormant untU evoked by a private syndicate. Then the money flows into
their hands, not to be expended in business or to be paid out for labor, but to be loaned
at usury on private account. It cannot be reached by any other citizen of the republic
except as it may be borrowed of those favorites who arbitrarily dispense it solelv for
personal gain. To obtain it, the borrower must pay to these dispensers of sovereign
favor from six to twenty times as much {according to locality) as was paid by the first
recipient. It is a fine exhibition of democratic government to see our Treasury
Department create the currency, bestow it as a gift upon money lenders, and then
stand by with cruel indifference and witness the misfortunes, the sharp competitions,
and the afflictions of life drive the rest of its devoted subjects to the feet of those
purse-proud barons as suppliants and beggars for extortionate, second-hand favor*.
This system was borrowed from the mother country, where it was planned to foster
established nobility, distinctions of caste, and imperial and dynastic pretentions ; and
those who planned it have always been satisfied with its operation."
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268 THE ARENA.
most vicious kind of governmental paternalism. The parties who
are now horrified at the thought of the government exercising
any influence in behalf of the freedom of the individual, who
through class legislation is being ground under the wheel, are the
very parties who have grown rich, or who hope to be benefited
through the governmental paternalistic legislation which has
brought a nation of unequalled wealth and measureless resources
face to face with the bitter cry of want sounding through the
republic, from crowded cities to sparsely settled country districts,
and which is nation-wide and growing more pronounced with
each year. These are facts worthy of careful consideration.
Moreover, it is impossible to estimate the demoralizing influ-
ence of this class legislation on the manhood of the nation. It
ha* lowered our ideal of liberty, and blunted our sense of justice.
Furthermore, it has made us as a people reckless of the rights of
the individual, when the individual was poor, or held unpopular
views, and it has given capital such power that it has time and
again prostrated justice. It has, moreover, lowered the standard
of manhood, and fed the selfishness of man. Other classes, see-
ing those favored by special privileges acquiring wealth, began in
a no less specious and plausible manner asking for class laws.
For let it be remembered that in all cases special legislation has
been enacted ostensibly for the good of the people.
the baleful influ- ^ ne * ata * v * rus even entered the profes-
ence of class sions, and regular doctors who found
legislation extends homoeopathy becoming a great school
to the professions, through wise and just freedom, and eclec-
ticism, water cure, and other remedial methods saving scores of
lives where in many instances the old and approved methods had
signally failed, approached legislature after legislature asking
for class laws, giving them a more or less close monopoly, and
preventing the free American citizen from employing whomsoever
lie desired to treat him in the hour of sickness. Had the physi-
cians been sincere, and merely desired to protect the people from
charlatans, they might with propriety have requested that all
persons professing to cure have on their office walls and in their
waiting-rooms official certificates signed by the county clerk, or
some other duly appointed officer, giving the qualification or
lack of qualification of the practitioner ; but so far as I know,
whenever this has been suggested it met with savage opposition
from the physicians who were begging for special privileges, while
in some states where they succeeded in enacting laws they pro-
ceeded to prosecute as felons persons who cured those they had
failed to relieve.*
* An Illustration of this character is found in the prosecution of Mrs. Lottie M. Post,
Dubuque. la., who, after the orthodox physicians had pronounced two cases iu a
neighboring town absolutely hopeless, was called to minister to them. In each in-
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EDITORIAL. 269
Thus, for a generation or more, laws upon laws have been
enacted, not for the people, but to enslave the people, that classes
might flourish. Moreover, the special privileges granted to
classes, without any proper restrictions, have led to acts
essentially dishonest in intent, as, for example, the watering of
stock, and to unjust oppression, such as levying all the freight
charges the " traffic would bear " that a princely interest might
be paid, not simply on the capital invested, but on inflated stock,
and that certain stocks might be bulled in the markets by the
gamblers controlling them.
It furthermore favored an unhealthy
fostered the spirit g^t m business life. The old methods of
OF GAMBLING. r , -, j.
earning money were too plodding to suit
the feverish passion for riches which seized thousands. It fanned
the flame of the gambler's lust for gold. Wall Street became a
throne of power, and is to-day a controlling influence in Ameri-
can politics.
We must also remember another great factor in this problem
of unjust conditions due to special privileges. The land which,
by a just and equitable system of taxation upon rental values,
would become a beneficent source of wealth and happiness to all
the people, has fallen very largely into the clutches of landlords
and land speculators, and thus again the few fatten on unearned
increment, while the many suffer ; the few grow rich in money
not earned, but which they acquire through values created by the
community. The melancholy spectacle is everywhere noticeable
in our great cities, of thousands swarming in stifling tenements,
while the same cities are walled in by vacant land held by specu-
lators until the community doubles or quadruples the value of
these vast idle tracts, which are often taxed as pasture land. The
spectacle of thousands of acres of fertile land remaining practi-
cally uncultivated in various parts of the country, which should
be under cultivation, further impresses the lesson of this grave
injustice to the masses.
On the question of land the People's Party platform declares
that a The land, including all the natural resources of wealth,
stance the patient consigned to the grave by the regular physician recovered under
the gentle ministrations of this simple, pure-lived Christian Scientist. As soon as the
cures were assured, Mrs. Post prepared to return to her home. Before she could take
her train, however, she was arrested as a common felon, prosecuted, and fined fifty
dollars, because, to use the exact words of the indictment, " she had practised on one
Mrs. George B. Freeman, and others, contrary to the law of the State of Iowa." And
this is true. She had violated a most infamous law : she was branded as a criminal,
though the only crime she had committed was ministering to those supposed to be
dying, and calling them back to life. Numbers of other instances might be cited
where the individual liberty of intelligent American citizens has been thus shame-
fullv interfered with by these class laws, and where law-abiding citizens have been
made law-breaking citizens by curing those that the nrotected class failed to cure.
Here again the law for equal freedom has been shamefully violated, and the rights of
every American citizen outraged in the interest of a certain class belonging to a pro-
fession whose practice is noted for being experimental, and which at most can only
claim to be a progressive art
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270 THE ARENA.
is the heritage of all the people, and should not be monopolized
for speculative purposes." Personally I do not think the platform
goes far enough upon this point, believing, as I do, that the land
is at the root of far more of the evil conditions of the hour than
many reformers imagine, and because I believe that taxation on
land values is fundamentally right ; that it is perfectly consistent
with the highest justice and the law of equal freedom.
volume Another contention of the People's
op cubbency. Party which Mr. Tracy regards as heresy
is the demand for an increase in the volume of currency.
Ever since the demonetization of silver, early in the sev-
enties, times have been growing gradually harder and harder.
Our population has rapidly increased. There has been wonder-
ful development of resources. The aggregate output of those
things which men require, and which is the true wealth of a
nation, has enormously increased, but the volume of the medium
of exchange has not kept pace with this wonderful increase of
wealth. On the other hand, under the pernicious influence of
England's selfish monetary policy, our legislators, at the behest
of that privileged class who, since they have grown to be a
powerful aristocracy, are popularly called financiers, have stead-
ily sought to prevent the healthy expansion of the volume of
currency. And so powerful have the money-lending lords
become that only the rise of the People's Party has prevented
their complete mastery of the millions by methods which suggest
a repetition of the policy by which the De Medici gained control
of Florence, and overthrew all vestige of republican government
save the skeleton. Now, since the leaders of the People's Party
have resolutely demanded an increase in the volume of currency,
the parties of special privileges have denounced them as luna-
tics, while the increasing bad times among the masses have been
charged to (1) bad crops (under supply); (2) good crops (over
supply) ; (3) too little protection — before the passage of the
McKinley Bill; (4) too much protection — after its passage;
and since all these have failed, it has been the " Sherman Bill,"
which the money-lending power through both the great parties
have made the scapegoat for financial depression. Now, how-
ever, the unparalleled financial disasters of Australia (bank fail-
ures, with liabilities aggregating over ^ye hundred million dollars),
and the terrible financial depression in Great Britain have rendered
this excuse no longer tenable, especially as France, with fifty-five
dollars per capita, is as prosperous as England is depressed.* The
servants of Wall Street are in a dilemma, and their confusion has
been greatly increased by the recent utterance of the greatest
* See paper by Jose de Navarro in the Forum. Mr. Navarro* though an advocate
for the gold power, admits that France has a per capita circulation of fifty-five dollars,
and that she enjoys wonderful prosperity.
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EDITORIAL. 271
authority among the gold advocates of England. The editors of
the great papers of the East, which have been indulging in epi-
thets of abuse against all who demanded an expansion of currency,
and who have been parroting for years every word emanating
from the officials of the Bank of England, must have experienced
a sickening sensation when they read the opinion of the Rt. Hon.
William Lidderdale, who last year was governor of the Bank of
England, when on May 19 this high priest of the gold power
admitted that the United States had not enough currency for its
people^ needs — his exact language, as given to the representative
of the New York World, being, " The increase in population and
commerce has been so great and so rapid that the output of prop-
erly guarded legal tenders has not been sufficient to keep pace with
the demands of the country? * For this same declaration the
leaders of the People's Party have been denounced by the shining
lights of the two parties of special privileges as lunatics. Can
it be possible that the great apostle of the single standard has
also lost his mind, or may we not be justified in harboring a sus-
picion that under the circumstances our statesmen and our great
dailies have in some strange, unexplainable manner come under
the spell of that privileged class who acquire millions by loaning
to those who earn the nation's wealth ? t
If we run over the list of those in the United States who pos-
sess more than five million dollars, we will be startled to find
• In this oonnection the following extract from the weekly circular letter of the
banking and brokerage firm of A. R. Chisolm & Co., 61 Broadway (published May 29),
will prove interesting. It contains some things well worthy of the careful considera-
tion of those who have so long permitted the servants of the money lenders to do their
thinking : " We note that the Rt. Hon. Mr. Lidderdale of the Bank of England agrees
with our views, so often expressed during the past ten years in our marketietters, that
this country needs more legal tenders. France, a stationary country, has sixty dollars
per capita. The director or the mint places the per capita tn the states at twenty-two
dollars. But two hundred millions or gold have disappeared, and no estimate is made
of the loss of paper and coin during the past twenty-five years. It is known that silver
wears out and is renewed once in thirty years. We claim that, deducting amounts in
United States treasury and banks held as reserves, and losses in paper currency and
coins, gold exports and hoardings, this country is down to the actual famine circula-
tion of less than six dollars per capita, counting our population at sixty-five millions.
The national banks owe their depositors nearly two thousand millions of money, and
yet they are in favor of further contraction. The municipal, state, county, and indi-
vidual debts of the United States exceed the legal tender, coin and paper, twenty times
over. The business man who could not make a better showing would be considered
broke ; and yet our bankers want the little expansion of the Sherman bill cut off."
t There are no tollers on the face of the earth more Intelligent and hardworking
than our industrial millions who are to-day suffering under the curse of man-made
injustice ; and Mr. Tracy's sneering remark is ill-timed when, referring to the single
taxers who belong to the People's Movement, he designates them as persons " ready to
accept any panacea for hard times cast upon them by fortune and indolence.*' Noth-
ing could be more unjust than this implication. The conditions which have given rise
to the discontent in the South and West are not due to idleness and fortune, in the
sense used above. They are results springing from unjust conditions, unrepublican
legislation, and the contraction in currency, at the behest of the gold power, and the
intelligence of the people has at length recognized this. The remedy, if Mr. Tracy
woula succeed in holding the allegiance of the people to parties who directly or
indirectly promote legislation at the behest of small coteries or classes, lies, not in
teaching his theories of government, as he suggests, in the public schools, but in clos-
ing, not only the public schools, but all schools, and forbidding the industrial million
thinking " out loud."
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272 THE ARENA.
how many of the fortunes are due to the giant evils of the
present — class laws, gambling, or unearned increment.*
The great revolution now in progress is primarily aimed at the
abolition of special privileges, arising chiefly from iniquitous
legislation, by which classes have been favored, and which has
flourished, under the sway of the two old parties, for a generation.
Its great aim is to establish equal freedom and to preserve the
republic.
* The favorable reception given the great Swiss innovations— the Initiative, Refer-
endum, and Proportional Representation — by the People's Party press is another fact
which should not be overlooked in noticing this problem, as It indicates the purely
democratic trend of the People's Party. These measures, better than any other govern-
mental experiments ever made, are calculated to insure pure democracy in place of
representative government, which may become an oligarchy with classes wielding
more or less despotic sway.
{>•
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THE ARENA.
No. XLV.
AUGUST, 1893.
THE NEW CRUSADE.
BY BENJAOTN HATHAWAY.
Behold! the bannered hosts go forth amain;
Their pennons float from many a beaconed hill;
Hark! bugle notes far stir
A million hearts; as one they, yearning, thrill:
Not with the old heroic valor vain —
Not to recapture from the Infidel
An empty sepulchre!
But, joy supreme! to bloodless battle wage;
Their cohorts arm to vanquish human need;
Grief, pain, wrong, poverty, —
A horde of nameless ills; to fearless lead
Man to regain his long-lost heritage;
And from the grave of Gold, of Caste, of Creed,
The living Saviour free.
True heroes! they go forth to sacrifice,
For him, the sore oppressed, the outlawed boor,
The utter- vanquished man;
He who has learned all suffering to endure;
Who, wounded, in unsuccored anguish lies;
Down-trodden, famished — the despairing poor,
We dare to curse and ban.
What need like his, the homeless vagabond ?
Whose sore misfortune still as crime we blame;
Him, bane of every land!
In whom true life is an unkindled flame;
To larger love shall he not, too, respond —
To wider freedom, to ennobling aim,
And brother's helping hand ?
Copyrighted 1893, by the Arena Publishing Co. 273
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274 THE ABENA.
Was ever phalanx of such noble men ?
The New Crusaders come, not to subdue,
But to uplift the mob;
Their mission, not of death, but to imbue
The dead, long buried, with new life again;
Restoring their inheritance unto
The poor, we wrong and rob.
Our brothers still, though vile, though passion-led,
Though schooled in vice, of every want the prey; *
The victims of all wrong;
Of power, of place, of opportunity,
Of all things good, the disinherited;
Forbidden, save in paths of guilt, to stray:
Oh, mournful, suffering throng!
O Charity! what good to succor want,
With justice still denied the struggling poor ?
The gold you free bestow
Can but postpone a judgment swift and sure;
The while, amid the sceptic's scoff and taunt,
From out their toil, who live but to endure,
Colossal fortunes grow.
Of what a God must it the temple be,
Whose brick and stone a million dollars hide,
If such his heart delights;
While just beyond its costly aisles abide
A countless throng in sin and poverty;
Who have forgot — their rights so long denied —
That they have any rights.
And what to him are ritual and creed,
Whom ritual and creed perforce condemn ?
Is there no virtue still, —
No power of healing in His garment's hem,
Who to the prisoned poor, as was their need,
Aforetime preached Love's gospel, preached to them
The gospel of good will ?
And not alone from out the city slums
I hear the cry of want, of grief and pain,
Of cursing and of prayer;
Anon a moaning like the storm-swept main
On alien shores, unto my ear there comes
From far green fields in Nature's fair domain —
The moaning of despair.
Alas! what evil spell has wrought such ills,
Where, if in any land, through honest toil
Idyllic homes should be !
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THE NEW CBTJSADE. 275
Oh! why should they who till a generous soft, —
Whose sweat with plenty the world's garner fills,
Be forced to bear, the while they drudge and moil,
The curse of poverty ?
O loss in gain! that brings a double curse:
To him whose endless toil the wealth has wrought,
That others' coffers hqjd;
To him through whom this woe and want is brought
Unto the Sons of Toil : a stolen purse
With worse than bitter penury is fraught
To him whose God is gold.
There other toilers be, who, toiling for
The larger wage, the lesser burdens bear;
Though they no want endure,
So nigh to him who takes the lion's share,
Whate'er their hire, they ceaseless war for more;
They would as hardly press the millionnaire
As he the homeless poor.*
Oh! bootless conflict of the powers of Wrong;
What matters, rich or poor, alike they take
The crust from needy toil.
Let all true, loyal hearts combine to break
Combines alone in selfish purpose strong;
In theft they but conspire to larger make
Their portion of the spoil.
Oh, pitiless! the war that knows no truce:
Can bloody conflicts that our hearts appall
Have aught to fear more dread ?
While idle hordes at Want's imperious call,
Would willing serve in all ignoble use
For any pittance, howsoever small,
To earn their daily bread.
When shall we learn, and at what fearful cost
Of conflict fierce and suffering intense,
The truth that one of old —
A savage counted, with the finer sense,
The sense of justice to the nations lost! —
Bold thundered forth in stern, rude eloquence:
44 The land cannot be sold." f
• If the class of farm laborers should successfully strike for one half the wages the
striking classes get, it would not be long before all the yet unmortgaged farms in the
land would be sold under the hammer.
t My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold. Nothing can be sold but such
things as can be taken away. — Black Hawk.
Our country was given to us by the Great Spirit, who gave it to us to hunt upon, to
make our cornfields upon, to live upon, and to make down our beds upon when we
die. And he would nerer forgive us should we bargain it away. — Speech of Me-tey-a t
in Chicago, in 1821.
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276 THE ARENA.
If not the land, not what the land enfolds!
Alas! until grown arrogant and strong
Through spoil of our estate,
Have we submitted to the hoary Wrong:
All wealth the land, the sea, the mountain holds,
Earth's hidden treasures, unto all belong:
Not to a syndicate I
Ah, me ! how long, how long, through troubled years, -
Of ancient ills so slow to make an end!
For power to turn the mill,
To speed the rolling wheels, that Toil befriend,
For light that flames in million chandeliers,
For warmth upon our hearth, — must we depend
On Man's untrammelled will ?
The despot, Gold, puts Liberty to scorn!
The king of kings! Shall we supinely stand
Beside our patriots' graves,
And let him rule us with an iron hand ? —
Our happy country ruined and forlorn,
Our great Republic evermore the land
Of plutocrats and slaves ?
Oh! none too soon, if not, alas! too late,
Up to the rescue of the People, throng
An army of the brave:
With evil patient, as in virtue strong;
With heart of love, as with the hand of Fate;
With life, if need, they shall set free ere long
Each custom-fettered slave.
And haste the time, to poverty unknown,
When none so rich in their ill-gotten gain,
They shall the poor enthrall,
And hold them, being poor, in proud disdain;
When none so poor they shall not have their own,
And to some honored place and use attain,
And plenty be for all.
The path of Progress is a perilled way;
The New Age comes to birth through conflict sore,
Whose travail now we see;
If not in vain, its anguish we deplore:
Yet turns the World unto the Better Day,
When Right shall be the master evermore,
And Power the servant be.
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MONOMETALLISM REVOLUTIONARY AND
DESTRUCTIVE.
BY HON. W. M. STEWART, U. S. SENATOR FROM NEVADA.
The gold standard means that ultimate payment must be
made in gold. Commercial credit is based on the assumption
that gold can be obtained when required for ultimate redemp-
tion. Previous to 1873 silver coin was as good as gold coin
for the purpose of ultimate redemption. Commercial credit
then was based on the coin of both metals. The difference
between bimetallism and monometallism is, the former uses
coin made of both metals ; the latter, the coin made of only
one of the metals.
From 1853 to 1867 the monometallists advocated the single
silver standard. Then the gold fields of California and Aus-
tralia were productive, and the output of silver was small.
The discovery of the Comstock and other silver mines indi-
cated that silver might become more plentiful than gold.
The monometallists then changed their contention, and
argued that gold was the better metal, and that silver bullion
ought not to be coined into money. The avowed object of
rejecting one of the metals was to make the coin of the
other more valuable by reducing the supply of the material
out of which standard coin could be manufactured.
Chevalier and Maclaren, the leading monometallists thirty-
five years ago, proved beyond controversy that the single sil-
ver standard would be beneficial to all persons enjoying fixed
incomes. The income class being the ruling class in Europe,
their arguments were very potential. Germany, Austria, and
Holland adopted the single silver standard by refusing to
coin silver. But England, having stopped the coinage of
silver in 1816 for the benefit of bondholders and others
enjoying fixed incomes, hesitated on account of the uncer-
tainty of the continued yield of the gold mines of California
and Australia. English financiers were not satisfied that
silver would remain the scarcer metal. An English com-
mission visited California and Australia, and ascertained
877
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278 THE ARENA.
that the wonderful yield of gold which alarmed the bond-
holders of the continent could not be of long duration.
They feared that silver would again become the plentier
metal. Their object was to use only the scarcer and dearer
one.
After the close of the Russian-Turkish, the Prussian-
Austrian, the Franco-Prussian, and our great war, speculation
in the debts growing out of those wars centred in London.
In 1867 Mr. Sherman, chairman of the Committee on Finance
of the Senate of the United States, visited that city. After
spending some time in London, where he had the opportunity
of consulting the manipulators of bonds, he appeared in Paris,
where a conference of nations was assembled to consider the
unification of coins* weights, and measures. While in the
latter city he wrote to Mr. Ruggles, the American delegate
to the conference, in favor of monometallism. He did not
advise silver monometallism, which had been so popular
on the continent, but accepted the English doctrine of
gold monometallism. His letter to Mr. Ruggles advocating
the gold standard was published in French and laid before
the emperor. The conference was so impressed with the
English view of the question, that it unanimously recom-
mended the single gold standard.
Mr. Sherman returned to the United States, and as chair-
man of the Committee on Finance secured the printing in
the statute of a law which omitted from the list of coins the
standard silver dollar, and thereby deprived the owners of
silver bullion of the right, which had been enjoyed from pre-
historic times and which was recognized by the Constitution
and laws of the United States, to have their bullion coined
into money.
The limits of this article will not permit a detailed state-
ment of the manner by which the Mint act of Feb. 14, 1873,
became a law.
Germany, on account of the $1,000,000,000 indemnity
extorted from France, became a creditor nation, and, believ-
ing it was for her interest to enhance the value of bonds,
followed the bad example of the United States, and in August,
1873, closed her mints against silver. In 1875 the mhits of
France and the Latin Union ceased to coin silver. The
other minor nations of Europe were from time to time forced
*o follow suit aiid discard silver as a money metal,
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MONOMETALLISM. 279
A large proportion of the demand for silver was the coin-
age demand in the western world, which was cut off by the
suspension of silver coinage. Silver bullion then depreciated
in market as compared with gold, or, more properly speaking,
.the market value of gold appreciated by reason of the
increased demand for coinage. The coinage demand was not
diminished by the suspension of silver coinage, but there was
nothing with which to supply that demand except gold. Con-
sequently the demand for gold to coin into money was more
than doubled, which has enhanced the value of gold in the
last twenty years fully 50 per cent. The commercial world
is now beginning to realize that there is. not gold enough to
supply the legitimate demands for money of ultimate redemp-
tion, and that, if silver cannot be used for that purpose, dis-
aster is inevitable.
After gold appreciated and the market value of silver
bullion declined as compared with gold, the banks and gov-
ernments of the United States and all Europe, except France,
ceased to treat silver as a part of their reserves. France,
whose population is not increasing so as to make a large
increase in the volume of her circulating medium a necessity,
by treating the $700,000,000 of silver coin in that country
as suitable for reserves, has avoided much of the distress
which is afflicting the industrial interests of every other
country in the western world.
The fact that as much as 95 per cent of the exchanges
in the commercial world are effected without the transfer
of coin misled the people while the pending disaster was
sapping the foundation of credit and enterprise. Super-
ficial observers contended that the volume of coin or money
of ultimate redemption was immaterial, because most of
the great transactions were effected by checks, bills of ex-
change, and other credit devices. They did not investigate
deeply enough to understand that credit can only exist while
confidence remains.
Confidence cannot continue after the discovery of the fact
that the ability to pay does not exist. If the United States
should agree to pay $100,000,000, no one would doubt the
ability of the government to perform; and the bonds or other
evidence of indebtedness issued in pursuance of such under-
taking would be received without question, and held without
fear of failure or default. But if the United States, with all
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280 THE ARENA.
the wealth and resources of 65,000,000 at its command,
should undertake to reverse the course of the Niagara River
and make the waters of Lake Ontario flow into Lake Erie,
no one would believe the undertaking could be accomplished,
and no confidence would be inspired. Take another case.
A few years ago the Sioux Indians could easily have col-
lected and delivered 10,000 buffaloes, all raised on the prairies
of the West. If the United States should undertake to
deliver that number of buffaloes raised in the United States
within the next five years, everybody would know that an
impossibility was undertaken, and there "would not be the
slightest confidence in the ability of the United States to
perform such a contract.
Twenty years ago the nations of the world had agreed to
deliver to their creditors, at various times in the future,
$25,000,000,000 of gold and silver coin, and corporations
and individuals had contracted to deliver at least three times
that amount; since which time governments, corporations,
and individuals have continued to make similar promises
aggregating an untold amount.
From 1850 up to the failure of the Barings, full faith and
confidence existed, on account of the continued supply of the
precious metals, and the people believed that the great mass
of national and other indebtedness could be paid or redeemed
in coin. Up to that time the world did not realize what the
monometallists had accomplished. They knew that the sol-
vency of governments and individuals depended upon their
capacity to obtain standard money of ultimate redemption to
meet maturing obligations. They did not know that the
current coin which could be used as reserves in the final
emergency had been reduced fully one half by the refusal of
the United States and Europe to manufacture money from
both gold and silver, as was the case during all the ages, and
that dentistry and other arts of modern civilization were ab-
sorbing nearly, if not quite, all of the annual output of gold.
The extraordinary demand for gold made upon the great
house of Barings, in consequence of the bankruptcy of their
debtors in South America, disclosed the fact that the coin
reserves, which were confined to gold, were insufficient. The
Bank of England, with all the immense resources which that
great institution has at command, was compelled to borrow
$15,000,000 of France to provide for immediate payment of
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MONOMETALLISM. - 281
demands against the Barings. If gold could not have been
obtained from France, a commercial crash must necessarily
have followed, which would have produced disaster through-
out the commercial world.
As soon as arrangements to provide for the liquidations of
the Barings' affairs were perfected, Mr. Goschen, then chan-
cellor of the exchequer, notified the bankers of England that
they must increase their gold reserves and curtail their credit
to maintain solvency. The failure of the Barings and the
proceedings necessary to provide for payment of their obliga-
tions, called the attention of the business world to the small
amount of gold coin upon which rested the vast fabric of
business and credit.. The discovery was made that confi-
dence had existed, in ignorance of the fact that the basis of
circulation and credit had been seriously impaired by the
schemes of the monometallists.
Every financial institution, for more than two years and a
half, has been engaged in most vigorous efforts to curtail
credit and increase gold reserves; but it has become apparent
that there is not gold enough to sustain the vast fabric
of credit depending upon it for ultimate payment. The
trouble has been largely increased by the political condition
of Europe. The great powers are jealous of each other, and
are maintaining vast armies, in anticipation of war. The
support of such armies and other military preparations are
creating the necessity for more credit, which is constantly
increasing the danger.
To meet the probable contingency of war, and to strengthen
credit for immediate use, all the great governments of
Europe are making enormous sacrifices to increase their gold
reserves. There are only about $3,500,000,000 of gold coin
in the world. About $1,200,000,000 of it is supposed to be in
Asia, where it is hoarded or used for non-monetary purposes.
About $1,800,000,000 is locked up for reserves in banks and
government vaults. The remaining $500,000,000 which is
supposed to exist, is mostly hidden away in private banks and
other places, out of general circulation. Very little gold is
transferred in effecting exchanges of property, but all busi-
ness men realize that business and credit are endangered by
an insufficient supply of gold for ultimate payment.
The strain has become so great that the slightest move-
ment of gold is watched with feverish anxiety. Every day
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282 THE ARENA.
we read in the stock reports of falling prices, in consequence
of the export of gold. The slightest rumor of departing
gold affects most seriously every business interest in the
United States. Self-preservation compels the banks to hold
what money they have, unless it can be used on call. Such
use commands very little interest, because the borrower
must at all times hold himself in readiness to return it
without notice. There is no money for new enterprise^ and
the business of the whole world is stagnant^ and the energies
of the people are suppressed.
The business of the world received a mighty impulse from
the output of gold from California and Australia, and the
new silver mines of the interior states and territories of the
far West, which increased the wealth and prosperity of the
world, between 1850 and 1875, without a parallel. But
when the coinage of silver was suspended, the shrinking
supply of material from which standard coin could be made
retarded progress, and development was hindered by falling
prices and hard times. The diminution of the basis of
circulation was gradual but constant. General prices have
fallen during the last twenty years fully 50 per cent, or,
what is the same thing, gold has appreciated in value, as
compared with the general range of prices, fully 50 per cent
since 1873, when the Mint act, omitting the silver dollar
from the list of coins, became a law.
The farmers, planters, and other producers have struggled
nobly against the inevitable until hope is well-nigh ex-
hausted. The great World's Fair is in progress in Chicago.
The mass of the people have not sufficient ready money to
spend for the education and enjoyment which that great
institution offers.
The bondholders of Europe, with the great house of
Rothschild at their head, have undertaken a vast enterprise
in reorganizing the finances of Austria. Austria has agreed,
and reduced her agreement to law, to fund her $2,400,000,-
000 of 5 per cent bonds payable in silver for the benefit
of the bondholding combination. The agreement which
Austria has made is a hard one for the people of that
country. Her 5 per cent silver bonds are being exchanged
at their face value for 4 per cent, non-taxable perpetual gold
bonds. The new bonds are exchanged for the old at 92 and 93
cents on the dollar, while the old bonds are taken in at par.
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MONOMETALLISM. 283
A necessary part of this scheme is the resumption of gold
payments by Austria. The Rothschilds and others are
selling these 4 per cent, non-taxable gold bonds of Austria
to obtain about $180,000,000 of gold. They have already
accumulated a large amount, but not half enough for their
purpose. These gold bonds are sold for about 91 or 92
cents on the dollar to buy gold. If the scheme can be
carried out, the bondholding fraternity engaged in the enter-
prise will make hundreds of millions of dollars. The only
difficulty is to find the gold.
Russia, which has about $400,000,000 or $500,000,000 of
gold in her war chest, will not furnish it. France, which has
more gold than any other country in Europe, exercises the
option which the statutes of the United States confer upon
the secretary of the treasury, to pay in either gold or silver.
France, when gold is demanded for export, exercises that
option for the benefit of the government, and offers payment
in silver. Germany, although she has comparatively little
silver, also protects her gold from export by offering to pay
demands for gold for export in silver. England pays a
premium on gold by favorable rates of exchanges, and pre-
vents the export of gold, whenever it becomes excessive, by
an increased rate of interest.
The United States is the only nation where the bond-
holding combination expect to obtain gold to carry out their
Austrian scheme. They have plenty of American securities
which they can afford to sell cheap for gold on account of
the great profits anticipated in the investment in Austria.
The sale of such securities in our market does not neces-
sarily procure gold. Payment is ordinarily made in green-
backs and treasury notes, which are presented to the treasury
and paid in gold until a draft on the government's gold is
unnecessarily alarming to the business community. The
bondholding fraternity demand that the United States shall
sell bonds and offer an investment which will bring in the
gold to enable them to oonvert their other securities into
greenbacks and treasury notes and withdraw the gold for
export. In other words, they demand that the national
debt shall be increased for the purpose of collecting gold for
export. The unreasonableness of the demand is shown by
the fact that on the 1st of May, 1893, there was outstanding
only $428,000,000 of greenbacks and treasury notes to be
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284 THE ARENA.
redeemed, because the greenbacks have been outstanding for
thirty-one years and no allowance has been made for loss.
Consequently, there can never be presented for redemption
more than $300,000,000 of greenbacks, and there were only
$128,000,000 of treasury notes in circulation on the 1st of
May of this year.
For the redemption of the greenbacks and treasury notes
there were in the treasury, on the date above mentioned,
$308,000,000 of gold and silver coin and bullion in excess
of the gold and silver certificates outstanding. All this
gold and silver, under the statutes of the United States, is
applicable to the redemption of both greenbacks and treasury
notes. Besides, there is constantly accumulating in the
treasury silver bullion to the extent of the difference
between the market price and the coin value of 4,500,000
ounces of silver bullion received each month, under the
provisions of the miscalled Sherman act of 1890.
It is said that the secretary of the treasury will not pay
out silver. That may be true, but the statute makes no
discrimination between gold and silver in the payment of
any national obligations except gold or silver certificates.
Besides, there is no authority for issuing bonds to buy gold.
The resumption act of 1875, under which the authority is
claimed, simply authorizes the secretary of the treasury to
sell bonds to buy coin (not gold) u to the extent neces-
sary " to redeem greenbacks outstanding on the first day of
January, 1879. With $308,000,000 of gold and silver in
the treasury, it can hardly be claimed that it is necessary to
sell bonds to buy more coin. It certainly cannot be claimed
that there is or ever was any authority in the secretary to
buy any particular kind of coin, because the law knows no
difference in the coin of either gold or silver. The secre-
tary's authority simply extends to the purchase of coin when
necessary to redeem greenbacks.
The administration has wisely refrained from violating the
law in issuing bonds. The gold combination are now clam-
orous for an extra session of Congress to repeal the so-called
Sherman law and confine the basis of the world's money to
gold alone. It is argued, with great plausibility, that if the
Sherman law can be repealed, coinage in India will be sus-
pended, and gold will be the only money of ultimate
payment throughout the world. When this is accomplished
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MONOMETALLISM. 285
the $4,000,000,000 of silver coin still doing duty as money
for every purpose except reserves, will be eliminated as a
medium of circulation, except for token money, and placed
on a level with nickel and copper; and those who have gold
in possession or within reach will enjoy a complete monopoly
of the money of the world.
The various false pretences offered for this revolutionary
scheme cannot be considered in any one article; but the intel-
ligence of the American people ought to teach them that the
destruction of one half of the world's metallic money is
fraught with consequences more serious and detrimental than
any other scheme of extortion and plunder invented by the
genius of the miser and the Shylock. The only question is,
Will the voice of the people be heard in time to prevent the
consummation of the scheme of confiscation and ruin so
vigorously advocated by the anarchists of wealth?
What difference is there in morals between the anarchists
of poverty and the anarchists of wealth ? The anarchists of
poverty seek to divide among themselves and their followers
the accumulation of others ; the anarchists of wealth seek to
absorb the earnings of the masses by cunning and fraud.
I am opposed to the destruction of property and property
rights by the violence of the anarchists of poverty. I am
equally opposed to the destruction of property rights and the
robbery of the masses by the cunning and fraud of the anar-
chists of wealth. The 65,000,000 people who have made
this country great must protect themselves against the
anarchists who propose to use either force or fraud, if they
would preserve their liberty and independence, and maintain
and transmit to their posterity the greatest and best govern-
ment ever organized by man under the providence of God.
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OUR INDUSTRIAL IMAGE.
BT JAMES G. CLARK.
The usurer dealing on certainties, and everybody else on uncertainties, in the end,
all the money gets into the box. — Lord Bacon.
Ancient pagan history is repeating itself in our modern
Christian civilization. The dream that troubled Babylon's
king is being reproduced and fulfilled in our industrial realm.
The image, whose form was " terrible," towers above us,
threatens us, intimidates us, dictates to our lawmakers, and
rules us. Its "head of pure gold" symbolizes the gold
standard. Its breast and arms of silver — representing the
seat of vitality, including the blood-making and distributing
organs — correspond to usury as embodied in the Roths-
child banking dynasty, which depends upon silver as a
circulating medium among the people, but, nevertheless,
degrades it by subordinating it to the gold head or govern-
ing standard that dictates terms in every great crisis and in
all large commercial transactions. The stomach and thighs
of brass are represented in the various industries, corpora-
tions, syndicates, and trusts which are largely, if not al-
together, dependent upon usury for nourishment and exist-
ence. The legs of iron, and feet, part of iron and part of
clay, represent our producers, wageworkers, and masses gen-
erally, — including over a million unemployed, outcast men,
— who combine strength with weakness, who will not unite
for mutual protection and defence, and upon whom the en-
tire structure depends for support.
The stone, cut out without hands, that is now smiting the
image upon its feet of iron and clay and which is to break in
pieces and level with the dust its head of pure gold, is the
Christ idea of human brotherhood, reincarnated in the
new life struggling for practical expression in the minds and
hearts of the people the world over as never before in all
history.
The foregoing interpretation may not exactly harmonize
with that of Daniel and the commentators, but it is, in the
light of fact and experience, a rational one.
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OUB INDUSTRIAL IMAGE. 287
Prophetic dreams, allegories, and myths are for all times
and conditions rather than for special periods and limited
application. They belong to every phase of human evolution
into which they appropriately fit. Baron Rothschild is the
" king."
And now let us see what relation he, as the represen-
tative usurer of the world, sustains to silver, the breast and
arms of the image.
First, Rothschild not only knows no north, south, east, or
west, but he cares especially for no nationality or race;
second, as a usurer and financier, representing cosmopolitan
interests, he regards nations only in the light of " business,"
weighing and measuring them by the single gold standard.
To him the whole world is an interest-bearing bond.
The uninitiated looked on in astonishment, recently, when
he proposed a more liberal silver policy than that advocated
by other foreign members of the International Bimetallic
Commission. They wondered at his generosity toward the
white metal.
He was simply liberal and generous toward Rothschild and
his " craft," and did not propose to kill the silver goose that
laid the golden egg. He realized that, no matter how much
the world's silver may be degraded and depreciated in the
interest of usurers, it must, even under the single gold
standard, always remain a necessity as a circulating medium
among the very classes who contribute most largely to the
profits of usury.
It was the king who had the " dream," and the king who
first saw the handwriting on the wall.
He knew that some of the nations most deeply in debt to
him might not only fail to pay the interest on their bonds,
but perhaps would be compelled to repudiate both principal and
interest, in case the policy of the gold-standard exclusives
should be generally adopted. He knew better than to trip
the feet of the image.
It is fitting that the king of usurers should be a baron and
an imperialist. Usury and imperialism are one and insep-
arable in spirit and purpose. The " divine right of kings "
— no matter whether of civil realms or of great accumu-
lations — and the divine right of professional money lenders
to rule over and rob the people are twin superstitions, con-
ceived and begotten by human injustice, born of social
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288 THE ARENA.
slavery and necessity, sanctioned by ignorance, and joined
together by a single ligament, that forms a connecting link
between the vitals of both. Destroy the one, and the other
ultimately dies, through the operation of a law that binds
demons no less than angels.
Usury is the tap-root of unrighteous caste, no matter
whether the latter inheres in "royal" or "noble blood," so
called, or in the vulgar snobbery engendered by hoarded or
inherited wealth.
Aristocracy based on moral and mental worth is possessed
of both heart and conscience, because it is a normal social
product. It may be exclusive, but is never a war-breeding
force. But an aristocracy which makes money the key to
position and consideration is an unnatural creature, void
of human sympathy and conscience, and therefore a constant
menace to the spirit of democracy and the peace of society.
Knowing that it has no valid title to special distinction and
power, it is always jealous of the assumed and fictitious
claim, and will not hesitate to maintain it with force and
murder if necessary.
The usurer's love of money for money's self, and for the
undue power and position it yields him, is, indeed, " the root
of all evil " — a root that supplies with malignant energy
and sap all other material and economic evils and iniquities of
civilization. It is this species of usury that forms the motive
power of our competitive industrial system, which is begin-
ning to show marked symptoms of death from "heart
failure."
The thoughtful and philosophical social reformer sees in
the legal-tender power of government the only available
avenue of escape from usury. The issue between the advo-
cates of the two ideas is radical and unmistakable, the
difference irreconcilable, and the gulf between them as
impassable as the legendary one that separates Dives from
Abraham's bosom.
The legal-tender right is in direct line of progress with the
force set in motion by our forefathers in the Declaration of
Independence — one of the legitimate blossoms of the new
departure made in civil government at that time.
It is a doctrine which the party of the future must accept
and assimilate without deviation or compromise. To do
less will be to shut its eyes and turn its back upon the logic
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OtJB IffDtfSffclAL ttiAQti. 28d
and trend of social and economic evolution, and reject the
promised fruit of a tree whose " leaves are for the healing of
the nations."
This nation can neither walk backward nor stand still, as
regards the money question, but must either go forward to
higher expression, or shrivel and die in the very bud of its
ideal.
In the meanwhile every other economic problem awaits
the solution of this. Hence, our next advance step in
governmental progress must bring emancipation from the
precious metallic standard myth, which forms the mainspring
and source of usury. This, in turn, is the natural and pro-
lific parent of large accumulations gathered by the few, at
the expense and through the impoverishment of the many.
The mightiest economic question of the day is, " How are
we to induce and maintain healthy circulation in the body
politic, whose condition is constantly growing more con-
gested and unbalanced?"
The Arena for February contains a thoughtful article
by Rev. Minot J. Savage, on "The Power and Value of
Money," in which that gentleman, while moralizing in an
exceedingly pleasant and suggestive vein, commits himself
at the very start to the conservative view of the subject in
the following paragraph: —
The love of man and woman has been the root of all kinds of evil
from the beginning of the world. Shall we therefore abolish love,
as many would abolish wealth, if they could?
Industrial reformers are frequently accused of atcempting
to " abolish wealth " because they insist upon some system
that will tend to a more equal and just distribution, not only
of the natural, undeveloped wealth, which belongs to the
people in common, but of the acquired wealth, which grows
out of mutual effort.
It would be equally proper to accuse men of attempting
to "abolish" water because they propose to conduct it from
lakes and streams, where it is evaporating or running to
waste, and distribute it over thirsty lands for irrigating
purposes.
When Mr. Savage, in his implied defence of the private
individual's moral right to large accumulations, claims that
it is the abuse which constitutes the evil, and that every
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290 THE AREKA.
other good thing, including " love of man and woman," can
be likewise abused, he calls to the stand a dangerous witness
against the policy of permitting unrestricted "individualism"
on the part of any one man in the power to monopolize any
of life's necessities.
King Solomon, Brigham Young, and other ancient and
modern saints are condemned now for being no less greedy
and grasping in "love" than our capitalists are in finance;
and the same "board of equalization" that has abolished
"plural marriages" — not because the husband " abused" his
wives, but because polygamy allowed man more than his just
and natural proportion of womankind — will sooner or later
settle the millionnaire problem.
There is no question as to the power and value of money,
which, as the representative of nearly all useful material
things, is necessarily the most powerful of all the inanimate
agents of civilization, and hence, when lawfully gathered
and rightly utilized, the most conducive to human welfare,
but when improperly employed the most potent for evil.
As members of a government of, for, and by the people,
we have ceased to ask whether good and wise kings and
chattel slaveholders are desirable, and have settled both
questions by repudiating the civil institutions that make
them possible.
We have done this on the solid bed-rock principle that it
is crime and folly to intrust with any set of men the power
to control the lives and destinies of their fellow-men. The
question as to the good or bad characters of the men from
whom such power should be withheld is no longer considered
by us. We are beginning to apply the same common-sense
logic to our industrial slavery and slave overseers.
The question that confronts us as American citizens is not
whether vast wealth can be made available when properly
disbursed, but whether it is wise and safe for this republic
longer to tolerate a policy that permits private parties or
corporations to create and control such wealth.
If condemned by experience as oppressive, and as a
menace to the integrity and existence of the nation, it is
certain that the policy must, through some means, be dis-
continued and succeeded by one that responds more perfectly
to the needs and will of a progressive people.
We are already in the midst of an irrepressible conflict
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OUB INDUSTKlAL IMAGE. 291
between legalized and strongly intrenched wrongs and
natural rights.
Competition among laborers is more bitter and intense
than at any previous time in our history, while competition
among those who subsist and get rich off the product of
labor has virtually expired in giving birth to corporations
and trusts.
The latter are growing more exacting and defiant, while
labor is becoming more enlightened as well as helpless and,
hence, more discontented and rebellious.
Every thoughtful, observing mind realizes that we are
rapidly nearing a crisis, and that some third factor can alone
save the nation. Out of every such crisis is born the
supreme question, "How shall we avert calamity?"
Governments have been in the habit of answering and
settling similar questions with "blood and iron." But a
government whose seed was the Declaration of Independence,
whose trunk is the Constitution of the United States, and
whose diet for over a century has consisted largely of Fourth
of July orations, cannot permanently answer and settle great
questions with its citizens in that manner.
We must bear in mind that this government was not
designed and fashioned after old monarchical ideas and
models, but was the result of a new and wide departure from
them; and that old heroic remedies, which other governments
usually prescribe for popular discontent, and which may
agree tolerably well with old systems that are unaccustomed
to democratic, hygienic treatment, may, nevertheless, be met
as usurpation and high-handed treason when administered
under the stars and stripes.
We have at last reached that dangerous point where a
comparatively few millionnaire owners of rich corporations,
which are protected by special laws, not only refuse to arbi-
trate their disputes with their armies of employees, but
demand that government shall, at the cost of the tax payer,
co-operate with its courts and its state and national militia
in a war whose avowed object is the destruction of labor
unions, and the unconditional surrender and complete subju-
gation of American labor to private capital.
None except selfish, cruel, and un-American men could be
guilty of assuming such an attitude; and no power save that
which inheres in large private wealth, unlawfully gathered
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202 ftHfi ABfcNA,
and placed, could either persuade or force a republic like ours
to stultify itself by yielding to the monstrous proposition.
All of these millionnaire commercial lords are animated by
a single inspiration and purpose, no matter how widely they
may differ socially and in personal organization.
Some of them are in their public capacity "philanthro-
pists," who have, with a small proportion of their stolen
wealth, established free libraries, endowed theological schools,
founded or built universities, or purchased seats in our
national Senate by virtue of votes in state legislatures, for
which they paid as high as three thousand dollars. Many of
them are model church members, and most of them are kind
and considerate men, socially and in their families.
But all of them, from east to west, and from north to
south, without a single exception, shirk their just taxes; and
the burden thus shirked is necessarily transferred to the lands
and homes of the laborer and producer as an addition to an
already crushing and increasing "burden grievous to be
borne " in the way of mortgage indebtedness, where it hangs
over the victims day and night, until it falls with a final
crash in the form of foreclosure and eviction.
And what, let me ask, has lifted these men out of the
ordinary walks and ways of common average life, and trans-
formed them into bold dictators of their fellows, and cold,
indifferent witnesses- of a constantly moving and enlarging
panorama of misery, for which they and their system are
responsible ?
I answer, The pursuit and possession of vast private wealth,
through which they have become morally emasculated.
Usury is cannibalism, civilized and Christianized. It
formerly captured, fattened, killed, roasted, and ate the body
of its enemy. Now the same spirit inspires a man who
captures his friend and fellow-Christian, robs him of the only
available means of getting fat, starves him in filthy garret
and tenement cells till his last penny is gone, and then kicks
him into the street, where he is arrested as a vagrant and
put to work in the chain gang for being without money,
food, or shelter, owing to his inability to find work in a land
where there are, on an average, not more than three jobs to
divide among four or five applicants.
When the founders of this republic took the initiative in
the creation of a government of, for, and by the people, they
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OUB INDUSTRIAL IMAGE. 293
opened the door of escape from other evils besides kingcraft
and taxation without representation.
, Chief among these evils is usury, which has already be-
come blood poison to our democratic institutions.
It is for the present generation to act as independently of
old economic forms and models as the signers of the Declara-
tion did of established ideas in civil government. Usury is
either radically wrong, or it is right. If wrong, it is the
most gigantic, destructive, and terrible crime of civilization.
If right, then universal bondage of the many to the few
is right; and the more slaves in proportion to the masters,
the better.
Oh t the bowers of Babylon are rare,
And the tinkling fountains play
Over gardent hong in the drowsy air
Where the careless youth and maiden fair
Are dreaming the years away.
And the kings of Babylon are bold ;
For the realms before them fall,
And they rule the world from thrones of gold,
While the people's lives are bought and sold
Like the herds in the butcher's stalL
Oh ! the towers of Babylon are strong,
And their dungeons damp and deep ;
And the rich rejoice in the reign of wrong,
And the princes join in the reveller's song,
While the toilers work and weep.
But stern and still, like a troop of Fates,
'Round the city's roar and din,
The invading host of the conqueror waits
In the midnight hush outside the gates
As the feast goes on within.
Oh ! the walls of Babylon are high
And their arches grim and low,
And the birds of commerce scream and fly
While the proud Euphrates wanders by
In its dark, relentless flow ;
But the river that rolls in Mammon's pride
Shall the people's servant be;
By the toiler's will shall be turned aside, .
And the channel surge with a grander tide
Than the pulse of the Persian sea.
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THE OFFICE OF THE IDEAL IN CHRISTIANITY:
VIEWED IN THE LIGHT OF CHRISTIAN
SCIENCE.
BY CABOL NORTON.
Down through the ages, men have recognized the value
of ideals to human existence, and purpose, and the necessity
of founding all upward movements in religious and secular
thought, in art, government and invention upon these ideals,
even if centuries should elapse between the original discern-
ment and the acceptance and attainment of them by men.
Emerson, as far as he discerned the actual, held firmly to
the ideal in the deep things of life, and on one occasion
pertinently said, "Hitch your wagon to a star," thus present-
ing the same truth that is expressed so tersely in the homely,
but significant adage — u It is better to aim at the sun than
at the church steeple." History contains many noble and
conclusive examples of the value of ideals to religion, nations
and individuals. It is the office of ideals in religion that we
wish to consider in this article.
In Hebrew religious history it is the ideal of Law, of One
God and of the ultimate triumph of Justice and Right, that
enriches the history, life and writings of this wonderful
people. The exalting of this ideal eventually led this nation
to the recognition of one Supreme Deity, under the teaching
of its greatest spiritual leader — Moses. The Grecians, in
their efforts to idealize learning and sculpture, expressed this
same tendency to enthrone in the minds of all men the value
of the ideal. The Romans most vividly manifested this same
natural turning to the ideal, above the chaotic and imperfect
in their finely constructed ideas of citizenship and govern-
ment, out of which shone in bold relief the ideal of human
protection, order and military might. Later in the centuries,
it was this same dissatisfaction with existing wrong and
imperfection, that actuated the Reformers to launch out upon
294
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THE IDEAL IN CHRISTIANITY. 295
the storm-tossed sea of human thought, already turned from
the popular tendencies of the professing Christians of the
day, a new ideal, namely, that of a church freed from
servitude to any single earthly personality, a church whose
walls should engirdle the world, and whose teaching should
accord to all men mental freedom and independence. After
the Puritans of England had in vain tried to attain their
much coveted ideal of freedom to worship God according to
the dictates of their own conscience, and had emigrated to
Holland, only to find there no more of an asylum than
England had afforded, they went out entirely from their
environment of continental narrowness and dogmatism, into
the great new world of America. And then, amidst new
dangers, began their systematic labors to rear ideal freedom
of opinion and daily life. Nor did the establishment and
successful maintenance of the great American Common-
wealth end the pronounced effort on the part of men to
reach the ideal of freedom.
Freedom in religious thought being largely gained, bodily
slavery must go down, that man's nobility and independence
as a child of an Infinite Father be practically established in
Christendom. A certain writer has said that men must
realize the ideal, and not attempt the idealizing of what
seems real to erring personal sense. The ideal or the real
must of necessity exist above and apart from the fluctuating
forms of error that exist as a hedge about material existence.
By rational thought it is seen, that according to the faithful-
ness with which men hold to high and noble ideas of right,
do they make substantial progress and gain the true and
best in life. The higher the ideal, be it that of civil, moral,
or spiritual selfhood, the higher will man rise. And the
lower his aim, the deeper will he sink into chaos, immorality,
and materialism. Without the ideal of divine perfection,/
men would fall by the roadside of daily life. The goal of
perfection is to earth's pilgrims as the north star to the lost
mariner. By keeping it continually before him, it guides
him to the haven which he may have long and despairingly
sought. John Locke saw the value of loving the ideal in
all things, when he said, " To love Truth for Truth's sake is
the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the
seed-plot of all other virtues" Men must love true manhood
for ite own beautiful component parts, not because they fear
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296 THE ARENA.
punishment if they do not. The mission of practical idealism
is not to encourage false mental pictures of an unattainable
state of perfection, nor is it a type of teaching that would
prompt vain speculations about God, man, matter, mind, anil
the universe. Instead, its purpose is to convince mankind
that the ideal is the common sense and practical in life. To
mortals governed wholly by physical so-called laws, it appears
vague and impossible. They persistently hold with a firm
grasp of the left hand to the unreal and material, while the
right is vainly outstretched to reach the reality of being.
Consciously or unconsciously, we all have our ideals. All
of us picture a state of living which approaches somewhat
that divine plan, which the great Architect has created, and
has always known, and which will be ultimately unfolded to
all men. There was a time when a government " of the
people, by the people, and for the people " was vague and
speculative, but is not such a government to-day a realized
fact? The basic principles of our national American Con-
stitution are in themselves ideal: but can any of us truly
affirm that American life, institutions, and politics, at this
epoch approach the actual and pure conceptions of the men
who implanted these fundamental principles in our Constitu-
tion ? Yet as ideals, how valuable they are, and will they
not be eventually realized ? Justice is practical idealism on
the moral plane. Is Justice unattainable therefore, because
of this fact? In the world of invention, — the idea — con-
ception, must of necessity, precede the formation of the
object. And if it were not for this perfect model in the mind
of the inventor, we should never have the invention. In
fact, what we call the ideal, is but another name for the
perfection, which to us as mortal men, does not at the present
appear to be our own natural selfhood. One has said, that
the ideal is now a fact, not will be, and that man has but to
awaken from the lethargy of imperfection, to see that the
Infinite Perfection has, co-existing with Himself, a perfect
creation. When this recognition of Being appears, evil and
chaos become less real and gradually disappear, while the
real and eternal, a perfect God, a perfect universe, and a
perfect man, appear. To the impure, dishonest materialist,
purity, honesty, and spiritual insight and might, constitute
distant idealism. Not so to the man who loves and reveres
the best aud purest in life. To him these characteristics go
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THE IDEAL IN CHRISTIANITY. 297
to make the true man. Should that which is simply above
our immediate mental grasp be termed unreal ? Yet many
would have us think that because perfection in man's char-
acter, and in his daily living is apparently a future fact, man
will never attain his ideal. In other words, the assertion that
idealism is simply theoretical, must be met with the declara-
tion, that it is the only reality that exists, for it is synony-
mous with perfection, and all thinkers agree that the First
Cause, whatever its exact nature, is perfection's selfhood.
It must therefore follow, that all which emanates from this
First Cause, must be of like nature, perfect, because like
produces like.
In Christendom to-day, three lofty ideals are gradually
with steady step forcing their way to the front, — namely,
the practical demonstration of Christianity, " with signs fol-
lowing," the brotherhood of man and the unity of Christi-
anity, and true science. Humanity demands that Christianity
be proven what it truly is, namely, practical and demon-
strable idealism. One has said in speaking of certain of the
great teachers of religious and moral philosophy, that all
have practically embodied their ideals in a single word, and
that their followers have perpetuated these ideals through
the ages. He speaks of the ideal of Buddha as, renunci-
ation, of Zoroaster, as purity, of Confucius, as moderation, of
Moses, as law, and Plato, as harmony. We are in the
midst of a great upheaval in religious thought. Material-
istic dogmas and mysteries have had their day, and thinkers
are looking forward to that new Christian Church and
Brotherhood, of which Emerson spoke when he said : " There
will be a new church founded on moral science ; at first cold
and naked, a babe in the manger, again the algebra and
mathematics of ethical law." The founder of Christianity
established demonstrable idealism, that is, he proved it was
possible for men, by working in accord with divine law to
lay hold of permanent health, holiness, and immortality here
and now. Jesus of Nazareth was an idealist in the fullest
sense of the term. To him the ideal was the real. Man's
spiritual perfection, individual dominion over all things
discordant, and his immortal oneness with God, were by
him recognized facts. Speculation never once entered into
his teachings, which were ever declared as Eternal Truth,
capable of demonstration. He did not look upon man, the
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298 THE ARENA.
creation of the All Perfect, as a fallen image of Deity, but as
a perfect Son of God, partaking of the same divine nature of
the Father. Hence his word, " Now are ye sons of God,"
meaning if men would recognize ideal perfection to be their
natural and true selfhood, and would become cognizant of
this grqpt truth, they would see in the ideal, the actual and
true, and the imperfect would disappear. All correct reason-
ing must begin with the actual or positive. We cannot
successfully compute a problem in mathematics by begin-
ning with the minus sign, or solve life's problem aright, by
commencing with a negative assertion, that would have us
believe that man can know nothing of the plan of divine
existence. In revealing to human consciousness man's
eternal and perfect nature, it is fatal if we commence with
the assertion that the divine man, reflecting deific perfection
has within himself, one iota of evil or incompleteness
derived from the All Good.
To-day Christendom presents a strange spectacle, a phe-
nomenon not without deep significance. Christian thinkers
are bursting the bonds of dogmatism and creed, and are
reaching out for that broad and spiritual type of Christianity,
that will bring into harmony, upon a common premise, ail
phases of spiritual thought. The recent movement called
the Laymen's or Christian Brotherhood movement, is a
notable example of the trend of thought toward the recog-
nition of the universality of the truths residing in the teach-
ings of Jesus. It purposes the union of Christians, on the
simple acceptance of Christ as the spiritual leader, without
creed or doctrinal test. To-day, we have in our midst, in
the religion known as Christian Science, what can be truly
called practical idealism. Not in any sense to be confounded
with the speculative idealism of Berkeley, Kant, Spinoza, or
certain other past or present philosophers.
Christian Science exalts the ideal through the unity of
Christianity and Science. Material, so-called natural science
is not the science to which we refer. It is the Divine Science
of God, as the eternal Principle of the universe, which it
teaches and practically demonstrates. It is here in our
midst because the hour has come for the advent of a religion
that will unite in itself, all Science, Theology, and Medicine.
This Science will be that of the Founder of Christianity
which was also his Theology. The Science of Being which
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THE IDEAL IN CHRISTIANITY. 299
rightly understood, casts out evil and heals the sick, not with
drugs or material means, but through the power of Divine
Mind, which is the true Medicine and which destroys every
form of disease and sin. From Papias and Irenaeus, in early
history, and from Gibbon, Rawlinson, and Burton in later,
we learn that the ability to demonstrate Christianity in the
healing of all disease, unquestionably existed in the Christian
church from the close of the earth life of Jesus, to the time
of the union of church and state by the Emperor Constantino,
near the end of the third century. This most certainly
shows that that which Jesus lived and taught, was the
rational and spiritual understanding of a divine law, superior
to, and apart from, the so-called laws of matter and physics ;
that this understanding would be the possession of all men
through all time, on one condition, namely — that Christian
teaching be kept strictly within the limits of its original
simplicity, purity, rationality, and divinity.
If three centuries retained the power to prove that Chris-
tianity had a scientifically divine basis, the truth of Jesus'
utterance, " The works that I do ye shall do also, and greater
works than these shall ye do," goes to show the perpetuity of
the ideal residing in his teaching, and also the possibility of
its perpetual demonstration. Jesus certainly revealed the
ideal of true manhood as purity, honesty, meekness, love,
and spiritual, not material might. Yet to-day how prevalent
the teaching, that the possibility of repeating the works
which ushered Christianity into existence, converting the
strict Jew, and the idolatrous Greek and Roman to its high
and lofty teachings, is an utter impossibility, and that we
must content ourselves with Christianity to-day, as a religion
of abstract faith. That life, at its best, is a deep mystery,
above and beyond the reach of any solution by man.
The demand of the religious thought of to-day, is, that a
spiritually rational religion (capable of demonstrating Chris-
tianity as its early representatives did) take the place of the
existing forms of popular religion, which lack the living,
vital force of primitive Christianity. No longer will men
be contented with visionary ideals and mystic theology.
Practicability and Science, must form the keystone of the
religious structure of this age, else religion cannot hope to
successfully cope with the increasing materialism and scepti-
cism of the hour. Men must be shown, that in the Science
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300 THE ARENA.
of Being, the Science which deals with, and treats wholly of
Divine Mind as God, the Creator and First Cause, exists the
only true solution of the problem of human existence. Most
men formulate an ideal state of being, where sin, disease,
sorrow, and death shall no longer hold sway. This state is
invariably portrayed as obtainable only after a life of sorrow
and discord, and as existing on the other side of the great
gulf created by the change called death. Christian Science
claims, that tins state is not only an actual possibility, but
affirms it to be a present one, hence its affirmation that if
Christianity is rightly understood, it means immunity from
disease, here and now, as well as sin. If, as Bronson Alcott
said, " Our ideals are our better selves," should not all men
hail with joy, that type of Christian philosophy which will
reveal in a practical way, this better selfhood ? Do we not
all need to outgrow material selfhood, with its discord, limi-
tation and death, and enter into the higher and diviner self-
hood in which we shall find that eternal harmony and perfec-
tion for which the hearts of men have so long yearned ?
The founder of Christianity taught men that if they would
enjoy the great blessings that bountifully flowed from his
teachings, they must depend entirely and radically on spirit-
ual power, as opposed to any physical or material force, based
upon and born of animal strength, and courage. He never
admitted a physical condition existed, that was beyond the
reach of a proper understanding of the laws of Divine Mind,
as he lived and revealed them. What he stated as Truth
in word, he proved in deed, thus establishing the fact for all
time, that his words and deeds were founded upon Divine
Principle. Christian Science, in its declaration that Mind
as Deity is Causation, is a successful protest against the ten-
dency of the age to ascribe all causative action to matter and
physics. Once it is admitted that sinlessness, bodily whole-
ness or health, and immortality constitute the nature of the
ideal or true man, that man will be considered irrational who
opposes the religion that shows, in a thoroughly common
sense and demonstrable manner, the sure way of reaching
this ideal. While we all love progress in its many phases,
as it manifests itself in the world of art, literature, inven-
tion, sociology, and religious thought, yet is not the same old
tendency of past ages, still strong in its citadel, formed of
timid conservatism and opposition to any new unfolding of
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fcHE IDEAL ttf CTTRtflTlAKliy. SOl
Truth, even though inestimable good to humanity is to follow
in the train of this development. If Christian Science had
begun as an undemonstrable and speculative theory, it would
have long ago sunk into oblivion, and " the places that knew
it once, would know it no more." But because it has proven
itself, it is to-day a living and rapidly growing household of
faith, whose adherents are proving their faith by their works,
— preaching the gospel (good spell), binding up the broken-
hearted, and healing the sick. This healing is not accom-
plished through blind faith, or through the agency of the
human mortal mind, but through the realization that the
Divine Mind or God, is the sole curative power for disease and
sin. In the words of the author of " Science and Health," *
the text book of Christian Science, " God will heal the sick
through man, whenever man is governed by God." Step
by step, hour by hour, day by day, the time approaches when
life, with all its glory and power, as lived by the Master, will
be within the reach of all true Christians, for he commanded
that all men be perfect, even as their heavenly Father. Purity
of life, nobility of character, and the understanding of divine
law, will make this possible. Then will the voice of Truth
say to the follower of Christ : —
Be what thou seemest, live thy creed,
Hold up to earth the torch divine;
Be what thou pray est to be made,
Let the great Master's steps be thine.
As we go beneath the surface of material living, the ghastly
shapes of sensualism, vice, and selfishness, turn us instinc-
tively to the ennobling influences of the permanent and
lofty ideals to be found in the Christly character, born of the
love, joy, and peace, of the Holy Spirit. Giving all power
to spiritual thought and Divine Mind, above the immediate
evidence of the personal senses, Christian Science succeeds
where current theories, based upon the so-called laws of mat-
ter, utterly fail in their attempted reformation of human
depravity. Christian Science recognizes that the reforma-
tion of man, and the healing of disease, jointly demand that
the mentality and not the physicality of man be dealt with ;
because of the fact that the thought germ of disease, as well
as sin, exists in the human mind, and must there be annihi-
lated. The poet voiced this thought when he said, —
• " Science and Health/' by Rev. Mary B. Q. Eddy.
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302 THE ARENA.
Every thought is an embryo,
Every word is a planted seed; •
Look to it well, that the seed you sow,
Be for the flower, and not for the weed.
Only from the vantage ground of just criticism can men
scan the movements of Christian Science as a Religion, prac-
tical and demonstrable — a religion whose adherents find.it
all sufficient, not only for their spiritual, but for their bodily
welfare.
How fatuous is it, to depend on the evidence of the per-
sonal senses while reasoning about the deep things of God.
From such erroneous standpoints, men have long portrayed
an anthropomorphic God, a material heaven, a corporeal and
imperfect man, and an ever-pres6nt, all-powerful devil. Is it
not wise to encourage that form of religious teaching which
builds on the basis of spiritual rationality, the idea of a God
which can be understood as Divine Mind, a spiritual and
present heaven, as Jesus said, " within the hearts of men,"
an incorporeal and perfect man, the idea or emanation of the
All-Perfect, a devil not all powerful and eternal but one
recognized to be impersonal sin, evil, satan, and temporal in
nature, because of the glorious fact that God shall at length
rule all things absolutely; thus shall the devil, or evil, event-
ually be swallowed up in victory; the victory born of the
destruction of all sin by Omnipresent Good. Religious think-
ers freely admit that the spiritual life transcends the imme-
diate life of material sense, yet many aggressively oppose
the idea of putting this affirmation into present and practical
use. Must this not be done, if we would demonstrate the
Truth of Being, namely, that man is not a creature of sense,
but an idea or child of the Infinite Father of Light? While
the Mosaic Law dealt with effects manifested as outward
acts of crime, and inflicted punishment for all wrong doing,
establishing the maxim, " an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a
tooth," the spiritual law, formulated and lived by Jesus, not
only discerned and punished the outward act of wrong, but
recognized the mental conception of sin in thought. It was
because Jesus recognized this fact that he succeeded so mar-
vellously in his short ministry of three years. To-day Chris-
tian Science insists that if we would destroy vice, annihilate
the myriad forms of evil in the world, and reform man, we
must go directly to mental causation, and there wrestle with,
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£HE IDEAL Itf CriRISl?IAKn?Y. 303
and overcome sin, disease, and death, in the human mind.
Centuries of bitter experience have proven the fallacy of
attempting the destruction of vice and vicious habits, by
mere corporeal punishments and penalties. Men must be
shown the way to destroy the conscious and unconscious
thought germ of evil and disease, ere it would destroy them.
Amidst the awful manifestations of depravity in human con-
sciousness, can it be reasonably argued that the perpetual
exalting of the pure and perfect ideal is detrimental to sub-
stantial progress out of evil and imperfection, into good and
perfection? If not, then Christian Science must be freely
accorded the right to continue its labors for the establishing
of Christ's Kingdom of justice, love, purity, health and right
on earth, by pursuing, along its well chosen line of action,
its practical demonstration of divine law, in the train of
which, follows the destruction of sin, the healing of disease,
and the ultimate triumph of the high ideal of manly and
womanly perfection. Truly sung our loved Lowell: —
Still through our paltry stir and strife,
Glows down the wished Ideal ;
And Longing moulds in clay, what Life
Carves in the marble Real.
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MASK OR MIRROR.
The Vital Diffekence between Aktificiauty and
Veritism on the Stage.
BY B. O. FLOWER.
The theatre of recent years has been a mask rather than a
mirror; that is to say, it has been afflicted with the gangrene
of artificiality. At intervals some individual of transcen-
dent genius has aroused the deeper feelings of the auditors by
the magic of his power; but for the most part the grave or
gay emotions have vanished from the brain of the listener
before the theatre door has been reached. In other words,
only the surface has been ruffled; the almost unfathomable
depths of the soul have not been stirred. The pictures and
voicings have lacked the true ring of life's verities in any-
thing like a full or vital way. They have borne to the real
much the relationship of the speaking doll to the aspiration-
illumined soul; and this is one of the chief reasons why the
theatre has failed to wield a more decisive influence upon
public opinion. Only that which is true, only that which is
real, or, if ideal, is in perfect alignment with the eternal
verities as found in life, can produce a lasting impression on
the deeper emotions of humanity.
It is only fair to observe, however, that the drama has not
been the only sufferer from artificiality. Literature, religion,
and art have come under the same baleful influence. The in-
tellectual era which dawned during that period of marvellous
mental activity and growth we call the Renaissance, owed
as much to the shattering of ecclesiasticism and tradition-
alism which had long enslaved the brain of western Europe,
as it did to the broader thoughts derived from Grecian art
and literature unfolded after the siege of Constantinople.
The new life and wealth of thought, imagination, and
expression, which characterized the rise of Romanticism, led
by Victor Hugo in the present century, and which enriched
304
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(I) .Ta». A. Heme, author of "Shore Acres"
and creator of character of Uncle Nat.
(3) The quarrel in the lighthouse. Act III.
(2) Uncle Nat and Helen,
ain't right." Act I.
(4) Uncle Nat in last act.
14 Now, now, that
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MASK OR MIRROR. 305
in such a marked degree the literature of France, was
valuable and vital in so far as it was a protest against the
bondage of ancient thought and hoary traditionalism which
produced successive generations of imitators, and which
prescribed arbitary rules as ultimates in art.
The power of the work of our modern school of veritiste
or realists lies in its fidelity to life as it is ; and though I do
not think that Ibsen, Tolstoi, Howells, or Garland have
ascended the mountain quite far enough to sweep the whole
horizon, they are doing magnificent work, and work which
is vital because it is true.*
That which fails to comprehend the eternal verities which
make for civilization will fail to elevate or in any large way
ennoble humanity — it matters not whether it be in the
drama, in popular education, in art, literature, or in religion.
That which is artificial, or if true is still encased in the
mummy clothes of traditionalism, will fail to touch the well-
springs of life.
Perhaps nowhere has the artificiality bred of imitation
been more pronounced than in the drama. The free lance
in theology, in literature, and art has ever had a far easier
path to tread than the dramatists who disregarded the hard
and fast traditionalism of the stage. The great expense
incident to staging a play properly; the timidity of managers,
who are, as a rule, wedded to conservatism; the critics, whose
education has been entirely along the lines of the past, and
who, as a rule, are very jealous for the old traditions; and
lastly a public sentiment, which, when discriminating, is
usually prejudiced in the direction of conventionalism, render
• A friend of mine who heard a gifted lady read Ibsen's «« Brand " some time since,
when the reading was finished, said : " 1 felt like crying out, Stop ! The piece pierced
my very soul. It was so painfully terrible. Why? Because Ibsen's characters are not
puppets, and the music of real human woe rang through this master poem."
I saw. some time ago, a letter called forth from a thoughtful person who had read
Mr. Garland's " Prairie Heroine " in The Arena. This gentleman said : " I read this
sketch more than a week ago, and have been miserable ever since. I knew such things
existed, but I never felt what it meant before:' That is exactly what true work does.
It compels the reader to feel as well as to accept in an intellectual way. Now when our
veritists appreciate that there is something needful beyond a statement of bald facts,
we shall have the real with all its vivid power, reinforced and vitalized by realistic or
truthful idealism. The time has passed when the builder is satisfied to lay the brick
and mortar without holding the image of the splendid structure in his brain, as is seen
by the hungry way in which the artisans gaze on the architect's plate of the finished
edifice. So the human soul to-day is not content with the truth as it is; the vivid por-
trayal of the truth as it shall be must be given. This contains an inspiration no less
marked than the power of mere portrayal of facts in a vivid way. The man is more
than matter; beyond the flesh and blood which remain when death supervenes, wc
have that something illusive but very real, which thinks, aspires, hopes, and loves;
true ideality bears much the same relation to realism that the brain or soul does to the
body. The trouble with the past has been that either the idealism given was false, or
was so divorced from its proper relation to the real as to act as an anaesthetic on the
people, and from this pseudo-idealism, religion, literature, and the drama suffered.
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306 THE ABENA.
it well-nigh impossible to present a dramatic work which is
strongly unconventional. It is therefore far more than a
personal triumph when a dramatist succeeds in spite of these
obstacles. Especially is this the case when the produc-
tion is artistic throughout; when it is free from all taint of
sensualism, or of all suggestions of an unhealthy character;
when the coarseness of the variety stage and the high sound-
ing mock heroics for which the galleries are supposed to
yearn, are alike absent; and finally, when the subtle atmos-
phere of the play is so charged with truth that, consciously
or unconsciously, every auditor receives a moral uplift when
witnessing the drama. We are only beginning to study
psychology in a scientific way, while for most investigators
the psychic realm is as yet an undiscovered country. Still
we are learning day by day to appreciate more and more the
subtle power of thought, and to understand that the sub-con-
scious mind often takes cognizance of the soul of that with
which we come in contact when this vital essence entirely
escapes our more blunted conscious perceptions. We are
beginning to learn that every book, every sermon, every
drama, indeed every thought, which comes before our brain
in any real or vital way, elevates or lowers our moral being.
Many conventional dramas, in which virtue is rewarded and
vice punished, and which abound in high-sounding moral
platitudes, are distinctly immoral in their atmosphere; for
when not artificial and untrue, they are vicious in situation
or suggestion.
II.
A play reflecting nature in a real and wholesome manner
was enacted during the most of the past winter. I refer
to Mr. James A. Heme's New England comedy-drama,
" Shore Acres," which recently won such a signal success in
Boston. The cordial reception given this play calls for more
than a passing notice, because its successful presentation was
a victory of far-reaching significance for the drama. It
demonstrated the falsity of certain claims which have long
fettered dramatic progress and prevented the stage from
wielding a decisively educational influence, which might
have been exerted had the drama been loyal to truth rather
than the slave of traditionalism.
" Shore Acres " was placed upon the stage of the Boston
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MASK OB MIRROR. 307
Museum the middle of last February, and scored an instan-
taneous and unqualified success. Its popularity, however,
steadily grew as the season advanced. From the middle
of February to the end of the dramatic season it was
enacted before full houses. For months immense audiences
laughed and wept over this truthful reflection of humble
New England life, with its hopes and fears, its aspirations and
prejudices, its love and jealousies, its sunny surface joy, and
its deep, flowing content. For one hundred and thirteen
performances the old historic theatre was thronged by the
most thoughtful and sincere people of Boston ; and what
was peculiarly significant, the closing performances, enacted
the last week in May, when actors usually play to empty
benches, were given before crowded houses.
Had the play been simply a clever conventional drama,
the success would merely have been a marked tribute to the
genius and ability of Mr. Herne, in his double rdle of dram-
atist and actor ; but the far wider significance of the triumph
will be readily appreciated when we remember that " Shore
Acres" is a radically unconventional drama, which boldly
ignores many of the most cherished traditions of the con-
ventional stage, and radiates an atmosphere charged with
truth and rendered luminous, not by the fire-fly glow of
empty words, but by the divine radiance of noble deeds shin-
ing through simple, humble lives ; and, moreover, it is a
play without a plot or a villain, dealing entirely with the
lowly ones of earth — merely a section, as it were, taken
from the every-day life of some poor farmers and fishermen
living on the coast of Maine.
It has been claimed that no play which dealt with
humble life, which ignored plot and excluded the vulgarities
of the variety stage and the cheap jokes and claptrap of
the minstrel and melodrama could succeed. The success of
" Shore Acres " completely refutes this calumny against a
theatre-going public; while those who have persistently
asserted that in order to satisfy public taste, plotless and
villainless dramas which make no illegitimate bids for the
applause of the gallery, must be relieved by gorgeous stage
setting and fashionable dressing in which rich gowns cut
perilously low in front, and ridiculously long behind, make
up for what is wanting in other artificial features, have been
shown that beyond the tricks of conventionalism, beyond the
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308 THE ARENA.
devices of artificiality, rises art, which, when true, appeals to
something deeper and finer than the surface whims of human-
ity, and which, even when she concerns herself with the
humblest life, provided she is true in her delineations, proves
absorbingly fascinating to all those in whom the current of
human emotions flows in the deep nature-ordained channels,
instead of over the shallow crust of conventionality.
It was not to be expected that " Shore Acres " would please
the froth or the dregs of society, for the denizens of these
strata, through education, environment, and the atmosphere of
life, become unnatural; they live behind a mask, and to them
the mask is more engaging than the mirror. The erotic
atmosphere of a fashionable society drama, heavy with arti-
ficial perfumes and shadowing forth luxurious ease, intrigue,
and the fever of a superficial existence, representing puppets
of passion, connoisseurs of wines, and ornamented by inane
scions of foreign aristocracies, best satisfies the butterflies of
fashion; while plays dealing with plot and passion, in
which villains are invincible until the final act is reached,
and where the young are nightly shown how safes are blown
open by professional burglars, and various other crimes are
committed with ease and dexterity, appeal to another class
whose point of view renders life's true visage as unreal as it
is to the flippant children of fashion's careless world. To
the dwellers in both of these social strata " Shore Acres "
failed to appeal ; while from the earnest feeling multitude who
ever recognize the voice of truth whenever spoken, and who
appreciate true art because their souls are sufficiently near
the pulsating breast of nature to recognize the face of truth,
it found a ready welcome.
I have known numbers of persons, artists, physicians, and
scholars, who attended this play from six to eight times,
experiencing the keenest pleasure at each performance; such
is the virility of truth that one does not tire when looking
into her face.
"Shore Acres" opens in an idyllic manner.* It is haying
time in Maine; the flowers are blooming around the old
• The realistic atmosphere of the play Is Indicated by an incident which occurred
one night when I was witnessing the performance. Behind me sat a lady and gentle-
man who appeared to be greatly interested in the production ; the gentleman, however,
seemed much worried because, as he observed a number of times, he could not recol-
lect any " Berry lighthouse " along that shore. To each of them, as apparently to the
vast audience, it was history rather than fiction which was being unfolded. Many
illustrations of a similar character might be cited to emphasize the peculiar influence
which this play exerted in taking hold of the real self of the auditor.
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MASK OB MIRROR. S09
homestead of the Berry brothers, and in the distance we see
the ocean, and the deep blue sky flecked with clouds. At
some distance, on a reef which juts into the ocean, stands the
lighthouse, which is later the scene of a terrible struggle
between the brothers. In this first act the children making
their mud pies are deliciously natural, as is also Uncle Nat
when he gives them a wheelbarrow ride. Here we also see
the land boomer enter this idyllic garden, and poison the
mind of the owner of the farm by filling it with wild dreams
of wealth to be acquired without the earning. We note the
curse of American life — speculation — with its seductive
allurements fastening itself upon Martin Berry, and hence-
forth his peace of mind is gone. The scene between the
lovers in this act is also very charming, and seldom has any-
thing appeared before the footlights so true to life as the
little pleasantry indulged in by old Joel Gates and the hired
men from the hayfield. It is a glint of sunshine before a
shadow which is to follow. This banter and sport, though
grim and savage, is one of those natural outgushlings of farm
life which relieve the monotony of existence. The great
scene of this act is reached after the hands enter the house
for dinner, and Martin, the younger brother, informs Uncle
Nat of his wish to cut up the farm for town lots, because he
is sure a boom is coming. Here it is that we begin to see
the tremendous strength of Mr. Heme as an actor. There is
nothing loud, nothing boisterous, about the words and actions
of Uncle Nat. On the contrary, everything is exactly the
reverse; but his wonderful recital of their father's drown-
ing, of their mother's year of waiting, of her death, and the
grave "out yander on the knoll," reveals consummate art,
and the reserve power which fascinates the auditor and wins
every true heart. But even here Mr. Heme does not reach
the climax of his portrayal ; it is not until Martin Berry dis-
appears within the house, and Uncle Nat stands silently
twisting a cord, that one realizes how much, to use a paradox,
a real artist may say when he is silent. During these mo-
ments Uncle Nat's face is a study for a psychologist; while
the emotions depicted call for no words, but tug at the heart-
strings of strong-framed men no less than sympathetic
women.
The second scene represents the interior of the house, and
the moving panorama is delightfully natural; but it is not
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310 THE ARENA.
until we reach the closing passages of this act that comedy
gives place to the full play of the strongest emotions known
to the human heart. As in life the gay and grave tread
continually upon each other's heels, so in this drama we
laugh and cry in almost the same breath. There is a wonder-
ful mental study in the final scene of the second act, when
Uncle Nat, with unconscious skill, impresses his thoughts and
wishes on the tense brain of his niece, urging in a manner so
natural that the art conceals the art for all save psycholo-
gists who have made unconscious hypnotic suggestion a
study, and thus are enabled to appreciate the scientific accu-
racy of Mr. Heme's work in this remarkable portrayal.
The third scene takes place in the lighthouse, and at the
close, through realistic stage effect, gives a vivid picture of
an ocean in a storm. This scene has been criticised by some
who imagine that simplicity excludes intensity, and who,
because the ocean is usually calm, would deny the legitimacy
of introducing the savage awfulness of the tempest without
and within. The scene in the lighthouse is as true as any
which precede or follow it. It pictures a supreme and terri-
ble moment in life, and we catch a vivid glimpse of the incar-
nate god grappling with the aroused savagery of the animal
— unselfish love battling with a nature rendered insanely
blind through passion — a scene which typifies the struggle
of the ages. The student of presentrday events sees in it
a miniature representation of the conflict now raging, upon
whose issue hangs the civilization of the morrow. That no
such idea as this entered the brain of the dramatist, is highly
probable; for a genius continually reflects colossal thought
upon his canvas, and deals with types without knowing the
deeper significance of his own creation. There is nothing
in this great act which is untrue or overdrawn. It is the
embodiment of high art; and representing, as it does, the
emotional climax in the drama, it is not only perfectly legiti-
mate, but without some such strong exhibition of human
emotion the play would have been artistically incomplete.
Great, however, as are the preceding scenes, for me, the
charm of the closing act eclipses all which has preceded it ;
for here the saint always visible in Uncle Nat shines out so
impressively that each auditor catches a glimpse of that love
which some day will redeem the world. Then, too, in this
Jast scene the artist's touch is everywhere visible.
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MASK OB MIRKOR. 311
It is Christmas Eve, the children are undressed, and the
stockings are hung up. Bob is not the only boy who has
wished to hang up his trousers instead of his stocking,
under the vain delusion that quantity measures the pleasure
of life ; and Millie is not the first girl who has wished she
wore pants. The radiant eyes, the innocent prattle of the
expectant children; Millie's indignation at her older brother's
scepticism in regard to the existence of Santa Claus ; the
sombre shadow cast by the sober, silent, and almost broken-
hearted Martin; the absorption of little Nat and his mother
in the exciting novel ; then the home-coming of the loved
ones, the reconciliation and the saving of the farm, the
entrance of Joel Gates, and pathetic picture of little Mandy
— all these and other scenes in this quickly moving pano-
rama reveal behind the play a great artist and a true man.
It is not, however, until one by one the actors retire, leaving
Uncle Nat alone in the great farm kitchen, that one fully
appreciates the courage of Mr. Heme, in throwing to the
winds the traditions of the stage. Here, for ten minutes
before the curtain drops, not a word is spoken. Uncle Nat
is alone. He seats himself, and the auditors, in rapt atten-
tion, follow the train of thought, as his face reflects emotions
which swell in his soul. The smile of the dear old face is
something never to be forgotten. During these moments
the audience becomes thoroughly fascinated by the wonder-
ful play of human emotions; and when at length he. rises,
the spectators, as one person, regard him with breathless
interest, as he locks the doors, removes the teapot, places the
kettle on the back of the stove, raises the lid, and with candle
in hand ascends the old stairway as the clock strikes the
midnight hour.
This was the first dramatic performance I remember
witnessing, in which the closing minutes of the play were
not marred by vexatious noises incident to the departure of
auditors; but during the four times I saw " Shore Acres "
performed, the audience seemed rapt until Uucle Nat dis-
appeared. It was one of the most remarkable illustrations
of the unconscious tribute paid by the people to the genius
of the artist and his fidelity to truth that I have ever seen,
and to students of psychology it was an interesting and valu-
able study.
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312 THE ARENA.
III.
And now a word in regard to the great creation of Uncle
Nathaniel. It has been urged by some zealous defenders of
realism, that in this masterpiece Mr. Heme has gone beyond
the limits of realism — and if by this the critics mean that he
has idealized to a certain degree the grand old man whose
every smile reflects the divine ego which crouches, cowers, or
rules in the brain of every human being, the observation is
just; but if, on the other hand, we are to infer that the
dramatist and artist has exceeded the bounds of the legit-
imate by creating an impossible man, or a life impossible
in that station and with that environment, or that the
character is not in perfect alignment with the real, the
stricture is untrue. There is no character in " Shore Acres "
truer to life than this noble-hearted old New England light-
keeper, but he is colossal. I remember admiring the physical
perfection of the late Phillips Brooks some ten years ago.
He then seemed an almost perfect type of well-developed
manhood, so far as his bodily form, was concerned; but stand-
ing by an ordinary man his great proportions were at once
noticeable. Now this is precisely what we find in the
ethical portrayal in Uncle Nat. He is very real, perfectly
natural, profoundly true; but he is colossal, revealing most
vividly the possible saint in every man.
The popular or conventional pseudo-idealism of the past
has been essentially immoral because it has been untrue,
strained, and unnatural; or when possible it has been so
divorced from the real as to carry little vital truth to the
brain of those to whom it has appealed. Realistic idealism,
when hand in hand with veritism, gives to life a moral up-
lift, subtle and illusive in character, but most potential for
lasting good. It is the soul of progress — the inspiration of
noble endeavor — the touch which floods the present with
light, and reveals the next upward step.
Realism is vitally important ; she depicts life as it is to-
day ; she is true, impartial, and mercilessly candid. But vital
idealism complements realism; standing by her side, she radi-
ates a light which is charged with vitality because it is
divine ; she is profoundly real and true ; her every act and
x deed reflects more of the real soul than we have been accus-
tomed to see ; if her face is luminous it is because the saint,
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MASK OR MIRROR. 313
possible in every one, is here triumphant. The relation
between realism and vital idealism in the utilitarian economy
may be compared to two influences acting upon the inmates
of a building which is on fire. Realism sounds the alarm,
she describes the true condition; while idealism leads the
awakened victims from a death-trap to a place of safety.
I repeat, that in Uncle Nat we see exemplified the possible
saint in every life; he is the embodiment of human love.
The affection for the old home, owing to its associations; the
tenderness shown for the memory of father and mother ; the
love for his younger brother, which led him to make the
supreme sacrifice of life, that his brother might be happy ;
the wealth of affection for the children, which is in essence
parental love, and the broad, tolerant spirit evinced toward
the socially ostracized young doctor — these are all phases of
the one supreme passion which illumines without dazzling,
which warms but never scorches. In the degree in which
this full-orbed love is revealed, we gauge man's progress from
the animal to the divine. In Uncle Nathaniel, from his first
entrance to the drop of the curtain, there is nothing strained
or unnatural. Every act, every utterance, is true to the finer
impulses of life; and every manifestation of the triumph of
love over selfishness has found its counterpart in millions
of lives. Not that all these manifestations are usually seen
in a single individual, for, as I have observed, this creation
is colossal ; but it is also true, and being true, it carries
with it a vital and uplifting inspiration.
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THE FINANCIAL PROBLEM THE SUPREME
POLITICAL QUESTION OF THE HOUR.
BY HON. W. H. STANDISH, ATTORNEY-GENERAL OF NORTH
DAKOTA.
Unless we have silver coinage, our wheat, cotton, and
other products will become so cheap that we shall be ruined.
Forty years ago, when silver was a standard of money, the
gold coinage in the world amounted to about $220,000,000
to $230,000,000 annually.
Notwithstanding increased population and accumulating
business, adverse legislation has destroyed silver as a stand-
ard of money, and the coinage of gold has decreased until
the annual production is less than three fifths of the former
amount, that of 1890 being only $116,000,000 for the whole
world.
Much of the gold now mined comes^ it is said, from silver
quartz, which quartz will not be mined after silver coinage
ceases, in which case gold coinage will be less than half as
much as it was forty years ago. The free coinage of all the
gold and silver now mined, on the basis existing in 1873,
would give us a less adequate supply of money to meet the
world's demands than we had forty years ago, as the total
amount of all silver and gold mined in the world annually is
less than $300,000,000, while then it was $220,000,000 of
gold alone, although the indebtedness now existing to be
discharged by money is double what it was then.
The coinage laws of the world control all prices and values
of the world. It has been demonstrated that the change
made relative to silver coinage has already lowered prices 30
per cent in all countries, thereby increasing the value of
every dollar in money, every mortgage bond note, and all
state, national, city, and county debts by that much. Thirty
per cent is not only added to private debts, but to taxation,
to discharge all public ones, of which in national debts alone
there are $26,000,000,000 beside our own.
314
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THE FINANCIAL PROBLEM, 315
On the private indebtedness of our people we are said to
pay $120,000,000 in interest to England alone, and probably
as much more to Europe, making $240,000,000 interest
annually sent from the United States to Europe.
The tribute of our Western debtor and farming popula-
tion, who produce most of the food which Europe and the
Eastern and Middle States buy and borrow, is still greater
to these states, in interest, as well as in the 30 per cent
reduction of value of food. The additional burden placed
on the debtor and farmer by this reduction, caused by ad-
verse legislation, is not merely 20 per cent, but 42| per cent.
Suppose, by way of illustration, that a farmer has $100 to
pay with free silver coinage, or as things would have been
had free silver coinage been retained, and wheat been worth
$1 a bushel. Now say it is 70 cents. Instead of his being
compelled to grow 100 bushels of wheat to pay that debt, or
130 bushels to do it, he must now grow 142$ bushels. On
a reduction in price of 30 per cent, he must produce of food,
labor, or property 42f per cent greater quantity to meet all
his debts, which in effect is stolen from him by the change
, already made.
The legislation against silver enacted years ago now com-
pels us to send to Europe annually $102,857,600 more in
value than would otherwise be needed to meet annual inter-
est on debts that we owe there. A still greater advantage is
now obtained by New England and the Middle States from
the debtors and producers of this country, especially from
the entire West and the entire South, as those states receive
more interest and more produce from the West and South
than our total exportations.
The records of the London Stock Exchange of last year
show that the English people held $12,500,000,000 of for-
eign securities, and that thqir interest income in gold on
them was $600,000,000 per annum. Two hundred and fifty
million dollars of this has been the result of legislation against
silver; and this tribute will soon be doubled if the policy of
Old England, New England, Wall Street, Cleveland, Harter,
and John Sherman be carried out; the same kind of tribute
will flow into the Northeastern states; the West and the
South will be giving that annual tribute without receiving a
farthing in return ; and the price of farms, wheat, beef,
stocks of goods on hand, and all other classes of property
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316 THE ARENA.
will shrink in value and pass eventually into the hands of
creditors and be absorbed by them.
In view of these facts, and in the light of opinions ex-
pressed by eminent authorities, it will be readily seen why
silver was outlawed in 1873, and why in the last Congress a
strenuous effort was made to stop all silver coinage and to
pass the Harter bill ; to sell all the silver bullion deposited
in our treasury vaults in pledge for redemption of our silver
notes, which act would leave the government to redeem these
notes in gold coin, and, not having that coin, would require
it to issue several hundred million dollars of gold bonds to
get this gold, and so to sweep the silver notes out of exist-
ence ; to add to the contraction that would be forced upon
us by stopping all silver coinage, in order to increase the
profits and robbery that the creditor class in this country
has practised upon the public for thirty years by controlling
the nominations and the press of the two old parties, duping
and misleading the people, securing the control of Congress,
and shaping legislation, and thus compelling the people to
rob themselves to enrich Wall Street, New England, and
Western Europe.
We cannot hope for any aid from President Cleveland to
avert this attempted and threatened fraud. He is one of the
most active participants in it.
As far back as February, 1885, Cleveland asked all the
Democrats in Congress to help him stop silver coinage.
That party during the whole of his administration opposed
the request, stood between him and the people, and in a
measure protected them from financial ruin. In coming
back into the chair now, it is said that he does not request,
but assumes to dictate, and that he is striving to compel
obedience through the influence of official patronage. Be
this as it may, we must appeal to our senators and represent-
atives to resist his encroachments and stand by the people.
We must assure them that if they do this we will throw '
down all party lines and stand by them, and let Mr. Cleve-
land go into the Republican fold, and the people of the
West and South will band to crush the combination.
Mr. Cleveland informs us that it is necessary to stop
silver coinage to prevent the depreciation of the poor man's
money. Is it the poor man or the rich man who has the
money to be depreciated ? One half of one per cent of the
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THE FINANCIAL PBOBLEM. 317
people of the United States possess one half of its wealth.
One out of every ten who die in great cities like New York
is buried as & pauper, and the condition of our country
population is but little better. With more contraction
forced upon them, their property being heavily mortgaged,
their equities will be extinguished, payments become im-
possible, foreclosures follow, and a system of tenantry, such
as now prevails through Europe, established for all time to
come. But free silver coinage will enable the masses to
retain their homes and farms, and not become tenants, will
add to the stability of government, and relieve distress.
To establish free coinage will stop the downward tendency
of prices, give our struggling people a chance to live, and,
under the decisions made in the legal-tender cases, will wipe
out all the gold contracts that have been made in this
country, and subject them to payment in gold, silver, or
greenbacks, either of which should be good enough for any
American citizen, and equal to the others in value the world
over, when free silver coinage shall be restored on the terms
and ratio existing prior to 1873.
As to coinage regulating values, and that the cutting off
from coinage of one metal that forms half the money of the
world will lessen values one half, and rob the debtor and
producer, and benefit the creditor and consumer to that
extent, we ask you to read the opinions of the following able
men, who are in no wise connected with this present move to
stop silver coinage and wipe out the silver money we have
on hand.
John Stuart Mill, page 301 of his " Political Economy,"
says: —
That an increase of the quantity of money raises prices, and a
diminution lowers them, is the most elementary proposition in the
theory of currency, and without it we should have no key to any
other.
Again he says: —
If the whole money in circulation was doubled, prices would double.
If it was only increased one fourth, prices would rise one fourth.
The very same effect would be produced on prices if we suppose
the goods (the uses for money) diminished instead of the money
increased, and the contrary effect if the goods were increased or the
money diminished. So that the value of money, all other things
remaining the same, varies inversely as its quantity, every increas-
ing quantity lowering its value, and every diminution raising it in
ratio exactly in equivalent.
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318 THE ABENA.
Coinage is the basis of the world's money, and fixes the
circulation in Europe, which is our market, and thereby
fixes our prices and the value of our property; and this
matter of price and value is vital to us as a debtor and
producing country.
The following is from Ricardo : —
That commodities would rise and fall in price in proportion to the
increase or diminution of money, I assume as a fact incontrovertible.
That such would be the case, the most celebrated writers on political
economy are agreed. . . . The value of money does not wholly
depend upon its absolute quantity, but on its quantity relative to the
payments it has to accomplish; and the same effect would follow
either of two cases, — from increasing the uses of the money one
tenth, or from diminishing its quantity one tenth, — for in either
case its value would rise one tenth.
Francis A. Walker, the well-known author and professor,
says : —
The public indebtedness of the civilized world to-day probably
stands between twenty-five and thirty thousand millions of dollars of
American money. The volume of private debts, including the capi-
talized value of fixed charges, loans, annuities, etc., is vastly greater.
Nearly the whole of this vast body of obligations is payable, principal
and interest, in money. The question whether the supply of money
shall increase or decrease, is, then, the question whether the burden
of these more or less permanent charges shall be diminished or
enhanced. It is the fact of a large body of indebtedness (some hun-
dreds of thousands of millions) which gives its chief importance to
the current productions of the precious metals.
Copernicus, the great astronomer in the sixteenth century,
wrote a political treatise to the king of Poland, in which he
said: —
Numberless as are the evils by which kingdoms, principalities,
and republics are wont to decline, these four are, in my judgment,
the most baleful: civil strife, pestilence, sterility of the soil, and cor-
ruption of the coin. The first three are so manifest that no one fails
to apprehend them; but the fourth, which concerns money, is con-
sidered by few, and those the most reflective, since it is not by a
blow, but little by little, and through secret and obscure approach,
that it destroys the state.
These citations might be multiplied indefinitely. As
stated by one of the above writers, all authors in all ages
concur in the principles we have announced. This being
established, Mr. Cleveland and the financial men of the
world, if we give them full sway, can by legislation increase
the value of the poor man's dollar to such an extent that he
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THE FINANCIAL PROBLEM. 819
will have to work, as in the time of our Saviour, for a penny
a day. But will this benefit him, or does it benefit the rich
solely ? The poor man earns his dollars by day's labor, and
pays them out at night for his existence. The rich man has
his dollars that he can loan out, and draws in his interest,
and eventually his principal, both of which grow in value
before they come in by enforced contraction.
The key to contraction is excluding from coinage one
of the two metals of which both now form a part, and
that one the larger part of the two. The time has been
reached, and the issue at hand is whether one or both of the
metals shall be coined as money. There is no half way to
solve the problem. It must be either free coinage of silver
or none at all, and the extinction of all silver money in
existence here and in Europe, which amounts to about
$2,000,000,000. Three fourths of these $2,000,000,000 is
now is Europe, and contains 3 per cent less of silver than
our 41 2£ grain dollars, and all of these European silver
dollars coined years ago float on a par with gold money
throughout all Europe.
But if the Harter bill is passed, which will destroy nearly
all our silver money here and stop all silver coinage, the
western governments of Europe, controlled by the money
class, — the common people having but little voice, — will
melt down their silver money in order to increase the yearly
revenues their creditor class is receiving from foreign coun-
tries, and to give their people cheaper food. But so long as
we hold to free silver coinage, our commercial and wealth
supremacy are so great that the bullion would be recoined
by us and keep the world's coinage the same as now —
increasing, instead of diminishing, in the future by reason
of the coinage of both metals instead of one.
This would remove all inducement for Europe to melt up
her silver money, as she would not cause any contraction,
and would lose 3 per cent in weight by attempting it. The
policy of Cleveland is that which produced the demonetizing
of silver, is just as wicked, and should be resisted by all
good citizens.
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AT WHICH SHRINE: THE REAL AND
UNREAL GOD.
BY REV. W. H. SAVAGE.
Judged by the standards in common use among good peo-
ple, this is a sadly irreverent world. To say nothing of the
daily speech of the people, the daily press is filled with
things that would have been inexpressibly shocking to the
fathers of New England. Even in the more stately and
deliberate magazines and reviews, one may observe a fashion
of allusion to the Divine Being and His administration of
affairs that would have raised the hair on the heads of John
Winthrop and Cotton Mather; and these expressions of indi-
vidual writers are symptomatic of a general condition of the
more civilized human mind.
This condition of things is distinctly modern. The me-
diaeval world, and, indeed, the comparatively recent world,
was rude and wicked and cruel ; but it was ready to bow,
with bated breath, before a church, a priest, or the mere
name of God. Its kings were armed robbers of the weak and
the poor, and its priests were the counsellors and confederates
of its kings; but they would have made haste to send most
of the scientific and literary leaders of modern Christendom
to the stake, for their impieties of thought and speech.
They had no regard for justice or for humanity, but they had
great reverence for God. They would take the bread from
between the teeth of starving children, but they dared not
disobey a barefooted representative of Holy Church.
The reason of all this is easy to see. The God they wor-
shipped — or, at any rate, feared — was a king infinitely
more powerful than any earthly sovereign, and even more
than any earthly sovereign intent upon his own glory. The
one thing in this world that God cared for was religion. All
things else were foreign to Him. Sundays and fast days
were the only holy time ; the church was the only holy place;
the priest was the ideal holy man ; and holy things were the
£20
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AT WHICH SHBINE. 321
only things that God was interested in. All the rest He was
going to burn up.
In such a world, the first law of nature was on the side of
religion. The attitude of worship and the mood of rever-
ence became the habit of human life. It was not a good
world for morals to thrive in, and morals did not thrive, but
religion had full swing.
But the old condition of things no longer prevails. We
are accustomed to speak of the change introduced by Coper-
nicus as a thing of sublime and far-reaching importance, and
so it was; yet it was a trivial matter, when compared with
the moral and religious readjustments that are coming in the
train of modern thinking. Copernicus pointed out the true
relations of several material masses that together make up
the solar system. We are coming upon the vastly more
momentous discovery of laws and relations that prevail in
the realms of spirit.
In the universe of readjusted thought that begins to
reveal itself to the modern seer, man finds himself in the
presence of a Being quite unlike the God of his inherited
theology. This Being is not the world's external king, but
its indwelling soul and life; He is not law-giver, but law;
not governor, but pervading spirit. The world's total of life,
and not merely its churchly rituals and its theological
devices for saving souls, expresses the environing and vital-
izing God. The sweep of winds, the rush of rivers, the roar
of machinery, are of God not less than the Hebrew Psalms
and the hymns of Isaac Watts.
This advent of the secular God upon the scene of our
modern life is commonly treated as an incident of more or
less interest to religious minds, and as a fact to be made
room for in the revision of theologies. But so far as I have
observed, the change proposed amounts merely to this:
In a convention of the ecclesiastical powers it is stipu-
lated that the ancient Sovereign shall respect the feelings of
the modern world; that His representatives shall reconcile
themselves as far as may be to its forms of speech; it being
understood that nothing in this agreement shall be taken
to imply that there has been any real change in the nature
of God, or in His relations to mankind. In all essential
respects He remains the God of old-time religion, and of the
old-time church.
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322 THE ARENA.
The practical outcome of such a condition of things is the
setting up of two rival deities. On the one hand we have
the God of the church, the priest, and the Sunday ; and on
the other hand we have the secular God of the cosmic order
and the mundane life. One of these is the external king,
whose only interest in men and things is the religious inter-
est; the other is the unescapable Presence whose ways are
seen in the majestic beauty of the universe, and whose
thoughts become vital and articulate in the story of
humanity.
This dualism is not clearly defined to the popular under-
standing, and it has not been, that I am aware, clearly stated
in the debates of the time ; but it is, nevertheless, a very
real fact. The two worlds and their rival deities are present
on the field where history is being made, and they are con-
testing for possession of the human soul. It is felt, even
when it is not seen, that they cannot be harmonized, and
that there are vast interests at the back of each. The relig-
ious hopes and aspirations of mankind appear to be staked
on the supremacy of one. The growing knowledge and the
secular temper of the average man seem bent on enthroning
the other.
The great majority of religious people declare that relig-
ion must perish if harm comes to the God of the church. A
great multitude meets this assertion by declaring that no
religion will be necessary when the divinity of the priest
gives place to the God of Nature. Out of this confusion has
come an unconfessed compromise which regulates the be-
havior of the larger part of the world. The God of the
church is recognized and worshipped on Sunday and during
Lent ; and the nameless but omnipresent secular Power is
recognized and obeyed all the rest of the time.
In most cases there has been no conscious double-dealing
in this matter. People are mostly honest in both directions
— as honest as they can be, when they either cannot or will
not think things out. In both directions they act under
compulsion. To change Shakespeare's line, —
He needs must go that Nature drives.
Man must worship, for Nature will have it so. But man
must reason and try to make the universe rational, for
Nature wills that also. And as most men fail to see how
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AT WHICH SHBINE. 323
they can do both at the same time, they do first one and
then the other. On Sunday they bow in the consecrated
places, and confess the lordship of the consecrated Power.
On Monday they leave the shrines for the ways of the com-
mon life, and confess themselves subjects of the secular
Power that was the first inventor of machinery, the organ-
izer of society, the leader of armies, the inspirer of letters
and arts and industries.
I have said that man must worship, for Nature will have
it so. This statement needs qualifying, however. There
come times when logic faces down sentiment, and requires
it to justify its existence and behavior — a time when the
hidden contradiction in the life emerges in consciousness
and encounters the rebuke of the soul that desires to pre-
serve its integrity. And when such a time comes, men
become possessed of a kind of sacred anger against the very
things they have held most divine, as if these things had led
them astray and betrayed their trust ; or they make a mock
of them, to cover the heartache they feel, but will not con-
fess. At such a time it appears as if the world were finding
a rare pleasure in scoffing at the very things that keep it
from being infernal, and in finding itself too sharp to believe
any more in God or in itself.
Such a time has actually arrived for very large numbers
of people, and the bitterness of their souls finds expression
in the ironical trifling of much modern literature, and in the
bitter despair of much more. The God of religion has been,
for them, dethroned, and in the secular God they see only a
blind and cruel Force, to which they must submit, but to
which they yield no reverence.
Such a time seems to be coming to many who as yet
refuse to surrender religious habit, and who still keep some-
thing of religious trust. The secular divinity looms larger
and nearer with each day on the horizon of their lives.
The Being whose sole interest is religion grows each day
more shadowy and distant. The Sunday mood and posture
of the life become more and more difficult to assume and
maintain, and the soul's strength and peace are undermined
by suspicions of insincerity and absurdity. It appears
certain that it must presently come to a choice between
giving up God and religion, and giving up the mind's
integrity and self-respect.
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324 THE ARENA.
And, right here, two questions face us: First, how came
mankind in such a predicament? second, is there any sane
and honest way of getting out of it?
I answer the first question by saying that mankind has
been trying to act out a mistaken theory of life, and that we
are seeing the natural failure of such an attempt. A frag-
ment of human nature has been taken for the whole, and one
half of the soul has found its rights ignored in the scheme of
life. In other words, religion has been permitted to pose as
the only human interest, and to keep one half of human
nature under an expressed or implied censure of the heavenly
powers. I might say that religion has been understood and
administered in a fashion far too narrow. That would be
true, if I should say it in that way, but I prefer the other
form of statement. I prefer it because it says just what I
mean, and says it plainly. Man has other interests besides
the religious interests of what he calls his soul. His duty
to ask questions is just as sacred as his duty to pray; his
duty to know the Constitution of the United States is quite
as sacred as his obligation to know the articles of his church.
The laughter of an honest soul is as legitimate as the sing-
ing of psalms. Divine service may be seen in the exchanges
of commerce, in the working out of inventions, in the lonely
study of science, in the patient cooking of dinners and the
patching of clothes, quite as really and probably quite as
often as in the cathedral or meeting-house.
We often hear it said, nowadays, that such things are parts
of religion. They are not parts of religion, as religion was
formulated and stated by any of the great bodies of Chris-
tendom, and I incline to the opinion that we mix things
and confuse thought when we talk in that way. The things
mentioned are legitimate parts of human conduct, and they
are necessary incidents in civilized society. But to label
them " religion " is to attempt a reconstruction of the dic-
tionary, such as no man or class of men can get accepted.
It is to deny by implication the basal thing in the traditional
religious conception of human history. There is no call for
any man to add to the more than sufficient confusion by
using words in a double sense. In any sense that the world
will understand, man neither is nor can be always religious.
The supposition that he may have to be so, if he goes to
heaven, keeps most healthy and earnest people from desiring
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AT WHICH SHRINE. 325
to go there. Man is farmer, trader, inventor, poet, artist,
musician, statesman, actor, soldier, scientist, and worshipper.
He is the counterpart and complement of the world that is
his home, his schoolhouse, and his gymnasium. It is right
that he should be so. His environment compels him to be
so, and the chief fact and force in his environment is God.
And this brings me to a second point in my answer to the
first of our two questions, which is that the God of the
church is only a fragment of the real God.
I make this assertion on the authority of divine revelation,
and this revelation I find in nature and in man. Let any
thoughtful person consider what the revelation of God in
nature and in man has really been, and the temperate truth-
fulness of my statement will be apparent. The surprising
secularity of the divine behavior is the most striking fact in
the whole range of God's activities. If gravitation be not
an act of God, it must be a contrivance of his thought. If
what we call matter be not a part of God, it is a something
which moulds in a fashion to fill all nnite artists with despair.
Is not a flower, if it is anything more than a dream of the
soul, a miracle of invention and plastic skill? Must not
God have thought all the wonders of architecture, all the
masterpieces of art, before the vision of them ever arose
before the eye of man ? Had not God enacted all tragedies,
smiled over the making of all comedies, and chanted all the
harmonies of epic or lyric song before Homer and JEschylus
and Anacreon and Shakespeare caught from him the secret
of their art? Did he. not kindle his lights along the avenues
of heaven, and flash his beacons in the northern skies, before
Franklin had tamed the lightning and Edison persuaded it
to glimmer along our village streets? Yet — we may as
well confess it frankly — the secular God was here before
the Sunday God's arrival; and if some terms of peace be not
found between them, the first will be last, and religion will
prove, as Comte expected it would prove, to have been but a
transient phase in the evolution of human history.
The sane and honest way out of the present predicament
has already been indicated. Human nature must have fair
dealing in the scheme of life, and the fragmentary God must
give place to the true Eternal. In other words, a reverence
for realities must take the place of reverence for theological
assumptions, and this reverence must express itself in honest
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326 THE ARENA.
thinking and speaking, as well as in honest banking and
trading.
The religious relation is one of the relations that men sus-
tain to God, and there must be that in him which responds
to the religious mood and aspiration. When prayer is the
genuine expression of human nature, it is good for man, and
must be pleasing to God. When a hymn of gratitude and
praise is the natural and honest language of the soul, then
the hymn has place in the divine order. But the prayer is
not always in the heart, and the hymn cannot always be on
the lips. We were not made capable of keeping forever a
single posture of thought and feeling; and if we had been so
made, we should not have been in the image of God.
No one will ^nture to affirm that what we may term the
nature-side of God is any less divine than the ecclesiastical
side. Why, then, should man apologize for his nature-side ?
I feel quite sure that God would rather have me admire Him
for the worlds and the flowers He has made than to have me
glorify Him for a doctrinal scheme which He did not make.
When I breathe my fill of the balm and vigor of the air, as I
climb a green and tree-crowned hill, when I lie on the wind-
swept summit and watch the clouds that come like ships,
sailing out of skies that arched my childhood, freighted with
such wonders as only childhood sees, — it is not necessary
that I should get on my soul's knees before the formless ab-
straction set forth in church catechisms, or that I should try
to turn my hearty human enjoyment into a hymn that would
fit into a church service. There is more of divinity in all-
out-of-doors than was ever seen in any cathedral, and* we
should meet God just as frankly as He meets us.
For a long time yet, the fragmentary Divinity of the creeds
and rituals, whose mundane interests are summed up in
churches and formal religion, will, like the Pope in the Vati-
can, lay claim to the world that has ceased to take Him
seriously ; but His tremendous rival is, inch by inch, crowd-
ing Him out of the regions of the world's real life.
And already, out of the confusions of the time, one may
see emerging the promise of a higher and more beneficent
order. The provincial divinities of heathendom and of
Christendom, and the blind gods of force and law, are retir-
ing before the advance of the true Eternal. A deeper
seriousness and a diviner exaltation are taking possession of
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AT WHICH SHRINE. 327
minds best qualified to understand the meaning of events.
A Presence, too near and too awful to be trifled with, majes-
tic, inscrutable, and yet infinitely attractive, pervades and
possesses all realms of thought, and is encountered on all the
ways of the practical life. If one may not say that the king-
dom of the Eternal is at hand, one may at least believe in the
possibility of its future coming.
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INEBRIETY AND INSANITY.
BY LESLIE E. KEELEY, M. D., LL. D.
In the Medical News for May 6, 1893, is an article by
B. D. Evans, M. D., entitled, "Keeleyism and Keeley
Methods, with Some Statistics." Dr. Evans is "medical
director of the New Jersey State Hospital at Morris Plains,"
and a member of the " Medico-Legal Society of Newport,"
etc.
To state briefly the scope and object of Dr. Evans'
article, he seeks to prove that the author of the Gold Cure
for Inebriety disregards the ethics of the Code of the
American Medical Association, by using a secret formula;
that the remedy is not a secret after all, and is published in
full; that the remedy does not cure inebriety, and that it
does cause insanity and that a few relapse.
Dr. Evans has certainly attempted a great feat. No
doubt, to Kis mind, his propositions seem verified. He has
taken great pains and expended great labor to prove these
propositions. In fact, he and the Medical News have spent
a year's time collecting the data which they use to prove
that the Gold Cure causes insanity; at least, the Medical
New*) about a year ago, advertised for these data to be sup-
plied by physicians, and they appear in Dr. Evans' article.
Dr. Evans indulges in some personalities which are below
the dignity of a gentleman in his position, but a knowledge
of his motives prompts me to overlook this unpleasant
feature of his article. The doctor has a motive, which is to
destroy the confidence of the profession in " Keeleyism and
Keeley methods"; or he would like, if he could, to make
one hundred and ten thousand cured inebriates believe that
they are not cured of inebriety, but have simply stopped
drinking and are insane. As Dr. Evans says that the Gold
Cure will cause insanity, and these one hundred and ten
thousand men have all been cured by the same remedy and
method, then of course they are all lunatics.
I may as well remark, right here, that the variety of
lunacy which these cured and reformed gentlemen are just
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INEBRIETY AND INSANITY. 329
now enjoying, and the joy that they are daily bringing their
families, and their industry in the world's work as bread-
winners, is a happy exchange for their inebriety, which was
lost at the Keeley institutes.
But I will reply to Dr. Evans' arguments and propositions
in order; and first, then, is my remedy a secret? Dr. Evans
says it is, or that I have not published nor revealed my
method of treatment; and I likewise declare that I have
not made all of the remedies public. This proposition is
a fact.
But Dr. Evans next proceeds to publish my formula in
full. This is scarcely consistent with his position to verify
that I have violated the Code. If my remedies are public
property, what more can the public or the Code ask for?
It seems to me that this criticism must be based on the fact
that I do not acknowledge that the analysis of the formula
is correct. Well, it is not correct. Dr. Evans does not
publish my formula. If his formula, as published, is correct,
then Dr. Evans knows, as well as all his readers, the Medical
News, and myself, that the remedy does not cause insanity.
There is no medical author or authority or book which gives
these drugs a place among the causes of insanity. The
medical profession has used these drugs as medicines for
centuries, — atropia, strychnia, and the rest of them, by the
stomach, by the skin, and hypodermically, — and yet no
such medical gentlemen have accused each other or them-
selves of ever causing, thereby, a case of insanity.
I deny that Dr. Evans or the gentlemen he quotes know
what my remedy is, or that they have published it. I do not
use the drugs they name, except the gold. I do not use
atropia, strychnia, aloes, cinchona, apomorphia, or the other
drugs in the formula, as published by Dr. Evans. The for-
mula is not correct as published. It never has been pub-
lished, and it is my present belief that while I live it will
not be published.
Several physicians are now quoted by Dr. Evans, who
unite in saying that Dr. Keeley's treatment is " dangerous."
Dr. Graeme Hammond says, "It leads to insanity." Dr.
Jackson, who so far forgot his " JEsculapian principles " as to
write for the New York daily papers on the subject, gives the
Keeley remedies as atropia, strychnia, codeia, caffeine, etc. —
remedies, it must be remembered, used by all physicians
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330 THE ABENA.
every day. If these remedies were used in the Gold Cure,
and are used by all physicians, why do they not "lead to
insanity " in one case as well as the other ? Dr. Norman
Kerr, Dr. Chapman, Dr. Elliott, and several others are quoted
to prove that these drugs, all used by these physicians, are
" poisonous " and u dangerous."
The truth is, as all these gentlemen know very well, that
nearly all drugs that are used as medicines are poisonous.
But they all know, as well as I do, that as medicines they
are used to antagonize other conditions of antagonistic char-
acter, and that they are not used in poisonous doses — at
least not always. Yet we never read, in clinical reports by
asylum physicians, cases like the following : —
44 A., aged thirty-five years, was adjudged insane and
admitted to the asylum. Family history showed no taint of
insanity ; but clinical history developed that patient had
some nervous trouble for which atropia and caffeine were
prescribed by Dr. Evans or Dr. Graeme Hammond, which
caused insanity."
Looking over the testimony of the physicians quoted by
Dr. Evans, and his inductions therefrom, I conclude that if
a doctor gives a patient atropia, and publishes his formula,
the result will be highly professional and beneficial ; but the
same occurrence and use of the same drug, without a publi-
cation of the formula, will cause the patient to become
insane. Such appears to be the fair induction from Dr.
Evans* data and arguments.
I assume that the medical profession is ready to admit, or
at least will not deny, that insanity is never credited to the
use of drugs used as medicines. It is true, however, that
the heroic doses prescribed by many of the regular physicians
do cause temporary delirium; and it is also true that poisonous
quantities of many drugs used as medicines cause delirium,
and the physiological effect on the brain is to cause a mental
aberration that is like insanity. If this were not true, there
could be no homoeopathic antagonism to the symptoms of
insanity.
It is well known that ignorant people always credit the
remedy taken during disease with all subsequent symptoms.
If the pain of disease happens to increase after taking a dose
of morphine, even a large dose, the patient will say the
remedy caused the pain.
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INEBKEBTY AND INSANITY. 331
There is a great difference between a sequence in time
and a causal sequence. A man may dress up in a new coat
and hat, and the next day show symptoms of insanity. His
insanity is a sequence in time, and ignorant people may say
it is a causal sequence; but educated people would look
for further causes for the insanity. They would, at least,
try to learn, first, whether some of the known causes of
insanity might not be present, before adopting a new coat
and hat as among the possible causes of insanity.
Dr. Evans says that, as reported by thirty-seven physicians,
<there have been found eighty-eight cases of insanity among
my cured patients. He then infers that the insanity of these
persons was caused by my treatment, for the reason that they
had been patients of mine, and were cured of inebriety.
The doctor also says that one hundred and fifty-eight cases
of relapses have been discovered of those who were cured of
inebriety by my treatment.
I have treated and cured, through the institutes for the
cure of inebriety, one hundred and ten thousand inebriates.
If there are one hundred and fifty-eight relapses, then there
is one relapse to six hundred and ninety-six cures, a small
fraction of one per cent. I admit that five per cent of my
cures relapse, and have never claimed better results. If there
are eighty-eight cases of insanity among the inebriates treated
by me, this gives one insane person to one thousand two
hundred and fifty patients.
In 1880 the census verified that there were one thousand
eight hundred and thirty-four insane persons to each million
of the population, or one to five hundred and forty-five of
the inhabitants of the United States.
It will be seen that the relative number of lunatics among
the Keeley graduates, so far as discovered by Dr. Evans and
these thirty-seven learned professional reporters, is less than
half that of the general population. I speak modestly, I
trust; but there is no other conclusion to be drawn from
these figures than that my treatment prevents insanity, or
cures it, in the ratio of fifty per cent.
But this is not a fair estimate. Statistics show that while
the population of the United States has a proportion of
lunatics as one to five hundred and forty-five, the class of
inebriates shows a ratio of one to about three hundred. It
follows, then, that while the treatment I employ cures ninety-
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382 THE ABENA.
five per cent of inebriety, it also cures seventy-five per cent
of insanity, or prevents it, which is far better. I am entirely
satisfied with this showing, and am certainly under obliga-
tions to Dr. Evans for his patient and painstaking and, no
doubt, accurate investigations.
The Keeley graduates do many other acts in addition to
exhibiting symptoms of lunacy. They become industrious,
grow rich, support their families, go to Congress, write
books, become lawyers, physicians, judges, and ministers.
They get married and raise families. They stop drinking.
But they may die in time, as it is appointed unto man once
to die. I do not know how many of my patients have died,
nor from what diseases.
But I suggest here another feature for investigation by
Dr. Evans. In the United States people die from suicide,
consumption, Bright's disease, liver disease, typhoid fever,
pneumonia, etc. There is no question that if Dr. Evans
were investigating this question, he would claim that the
death of any cured inebriate, treated by me, was brought
about in some manner by my cure of inebriety.
My remedy has performed the greatest scientific miracle of
the age, in curing one hundred and ten thousand inebriates
and (according to theifigures) several hundred cases of insan-
ity; but I do not claim that it will cure consumption, typhoid,
or pneumonia, nor can it or does it cause these diseases.
Neither does it cause insanity. But I have nowhere claimed
that my remedy or my treatment for inebriety will cure
insanity. I remark that this is, however, a logical inference
from Dr. Evans' figures. But the treatment will cure
inebriety, no matter with what other disease the inebriety
may be associated. Consumption, Bright's disease, mental
disease, and nearly every chronic disease known have been
associated with the one hundred and ten thousand cases
of inebriety treated. A certain per cent of these diseases
have had their fatal ending. I expect, before long, to see
long lists of these cases of fatal chronic diseases reported by
conscientious writers like Dr. Evans, in which the consump-
tion, Bright's disease, hob-nailed livers, cancers, and other
diseases will be credited to my treatment. If the Gold
Cure will cause insanity, there is no reason why it will not
cause tuberculosis.
Dr. Evans does not know the remedy or remedies I use,
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INEBRIETY AND INSANITY, 833
except the gold. He knows that gold has been used for
centuries as a medicine. He knows that Drs. Shurley and
Gibbs, Dr. Angear, and others are using gold as a remedy
for consumption. I have nothing to do with his claims for
the action of strychnia, atropia, etc., as mentioned by him ;
but if Dr. Evans and others have any reason to believe that
these medicines cause insanity, they should cease prescribing
them at once. If a physician claims that these drugs do
cause or may cause insanity, then such physicians must be
criminally responsible for using them.
I do not believe for a moment that Dr. Evans or other
like critics of my remedy, who base their virtuous sorrows on
my violation of the Code, or holding my remedies secret,
care anything about these allegations. Gentlemen who write
as they do can have very little respect for any of the tenets
of ethics, medical or general. Their grievance consists in
the fact that I have suggested and demonstrated that
inebriety is a disease and is curable, and that a personal
supervision of the patient is necessary.
Instead of taking into account the vast number of cures,
as they should in making a statistical exhibit of results,
these gentlemen ignore the cures, but go prowling about
asylums, searching for accidental and rare insanity, and
grope through morgues if, perchance, they may find a
Keeley patient among the list of unfortunates, who, tired of
life and robbed of the solace of drink, has smitten, with his
own hand, the spectral mystery which stands between
human life and the great unknown.
But the insinuations of the Medical News and Dr. Evans'
paper necessarily lead me to refer to the real causes of
insanity, and the relation of alcohol and other drugs to this
disease. What are the general and special causes of
insanity ?
Charles Mercier, in his work entitled, " Sanity and In-
sanity," gives the causes of insanity generally as follows: —
1. The first law of inheritance. This first law he defines
as the old rule of reproduction, that like begets like, subject
to variations.
2. The second law of heredity. The second law he
declares to be the rule that mental, moral, and physical well
being and soundness are proportionate to the sanguineous
(blood) dissimilarity of the parents.
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334 *HE AitEtfA.
3. Direct stress. By this is meant the direct action of a
noxious agent, as alcohol or traumatism or brain tumor,
upon the brain centres, which can overcome their physio-
logical action.
4. Indirect stress. By this is meant some remote internal
or external stress or force which can produce the same result
as bodily disease, or causes acting from the environment
upon the brain centres through the mind — as disappoint-
ment or other mental trouble or worry.
Kirchhoff gives the more special causes of insanity as
follows : —
Bodily causes : —
1. Diseases of the brain, membranes, cord, nerves, and
sympathetic nerve.
2. Anaemia and exhausting diseases of the internal organs.
3. Diseases of the sexual organs, or their functional dis-
turbance.
4. Febrile diseases and their poisoning, and other poisons.
5. Psychical causes.
Of these causes, I will refer to that only of insanity caused
by poisons.
It is well known, as Kirchhoff says, that the contagious,
infectious, or mycotic diseases may cause insanity. Delirium
is a common accompaniment of fever, and is caused by the
action of the germ ptomaine upon the brain centres. The
development of insanity, after a fever, is due to the chronic
poisoning of the ptomaine. In addition, certain mechanical
causes, as indurations in the membranes or emboli of the
vessels, may follow and be caused by a fever, and also cause
insanity.
Kirchhoff also says that other poisons may cause insanity.
Among these he enumerates opium, hasheesh, and like drugs,
taken in poisonous quantities, from the formation of habit or
inebriety. But the chief drug in relation to the cause of
insanity, he says, is alcohol, and I certainly agree with this
statement.
It may be true, as Dr. Evans says, that a few patients may
find their way from the cure of inebriety to insane asylums.
It is known that disease of the brain centres is one of the
remote effects, or at least sequences in time, of alcohol. It
is known that alcohol may cause, in the same way or indi-
rectly, disease of the other bodily organs, which may cause
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IKEBRIET?Y Altt) INSANITY. 335
insanity. It is true that inebriety itself is a type of insanity
(circular), and that a drunken man is an insane man. It is
true that the direct effect of alcohol, in a large quantity or
a drunken fit, is insanity.
If medical men are in any manner responsible for insanity,
associated with or caused by alcohol, it is not because they
attempt to cure or do cure the inebriety, or craving for drink,
but because they prescribe alcohol as a medicine for other
diseases.
Alcohol will cause inebriety just as effectually, when pre-
scribed by a physician, as when taken without a prescription.
It would be well for Dr. Evans and the Medical News to
secure reports from asylum physicians on this question. It
would be interesting, indeed, to know the per cent of lunatics
who were made insane by a prescription containing alcohol.
My own statistics on this question are startling, and will
surprise the medical profession and the world when pub-
lished, as they will be. In the meantime, I will say that the
data are all-sufficient to justify the statement that physicians
will do much more effectual work in the prevention of insan-
ity by ceasing to prescribe alcohol, than by criticising my
treatment of inebriety.
I do not deny that alcohol is a very effectual medicine.
It antagonizes many symptoms. It is germitoxic. It is
anti-pyritic, or it lowers temperature. It is a heart stimu-
lant. It is a brain and nerve stimulant. But, taken in any
condition, as a medicine for whatever symptom, whether pre-
scribed by a physician or not, alcohol may cause inebriety,
insanity, and organic disease, with all the individual and
social miseries that belong to inebriety.
Alcoholic intoxication is insanity. The higher cerebral
nerve centres are rendered inco-ordinate. The drunken man
is a maniac, and quite frequently, in the excitable stage,
requires restraint. When a young man drinks wine, at a
party or conviviaily, he becomes excited, hilarious, more or
less confused, inco-ordinate, then stupid; and then goes off
into a comatose sleep, until the poison is consumed, when
he is restored once more to sanity.
Viewed entirely from the standpoint of physical pathology,
without a knowledge of the cause, this debauch can only be
called an attack of insanity. Now it will be noted that the
course and symptoms of a drunken fit resemble the whole
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336 THE ARENA.
course and progress of insanity. In the first stage is " eleva-
tion " of the higher cerebral centres — exaltation of self and
visions of grandeur. The man is conscious of everything,
except that he is drunk. A few more drinks, and then the
higher centres take on confusion, the lower centres become
paralyzed, speech is thickened, the gait is staggering, the
man reels, mutters, grows stupid, and relapses into coma and
general paralysis, and is dead drunk. This is the typical
course of the disease known as general paralysis. In the
first stages of this disease there is mental exaltation, then
mental perversion, then the lower centres become involved,
and, finally, the scene ends with coma and general paralysis.
In a debauch, alcohol first attacks the higher nerve centres
— cerebrum and cerebellum. The reason is because these
centres have less resistance than the lower to alcohol. The
lower centres are involved later, and are affected least. But
cases are numerous in which the lower centres are poisoned
with fatal effect. The debauchee sinks into deep coma;
the poisoning fatally involves and paralyzes the lower nerve
centres, which causes the heart and respiration to fail, and
the poma fades away into oblivion — the inebriate is dead.
Nerve cells are very impressionable. They have the
power of becoming educated. Repeated impressions made
upon them from any source will cause this training, or con-
duct, or mode of action, or education. When the brain cells
are educated, they perform their functions according to the
form and type of this training. They act as they are taught
to act.
Now, all inebriety is periodical, though, apparently, many
cases may be constant or continuous ; but in every case this
periodicity may be found, though it varies from a part of a
day to part of a decade in duration. The real reason of this
is because the nerve cells were taught to demand and resist
alcohol in this periodical manner. No man drinks just as
much every hour. He leaves intervals between drinks, and
between debauches. When he has established a craving for
liquor, he will automatically imitate the method of drinking
as it was first indulged.
But repeated debauches educate the cells into inebriety.
The mental manifestations of inebriety are those of insanity.
I consider an inebriate an insane person. I regard his insan-
ity as the circular variety, and will give my reasons.
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INEBRIETY AND INSANITY. 337
Kirchhoff says circular insanity is a periodical attack of
mania, succeeded by an interval of melancholy, or even an
interval of apparent sanity.
The periodical inebriate fills these indications. He is
periodically a maniac. His debauches are followed by an
interval of apparent freedom from liquor and mania. I do
not say that all inebriates should be confined in an asylum ;
but I certainly do say that were they not known to be drink-
ing men, their mental manifestations and conduct would
convict all of them of insanity in the courts, and they would
be sent to asylums.
I claim for the Gold Cure treatment that, with the excep-
tion of a small per cent, indeed, the cure of the inebriety,
the craving for drink, permits the recovery from the insanity.
But it must be expected that there should be a few cases of
failure. From this data, then, that insanity is a symptom of
all inebriety, and that my remedy is given under the personal
supervision of physicians, all of whom are better learned in
the treatment of inebriety than Dr. Evans, and that the
remedy cures inebriety, as given by these physicians — from
these data, I pronounce the criticism of Dr. Evans unscien-
tific. In fact, knowing that his motives are malicious, and
that he is entirely ignorant of the pathology of inebriety and
of my remedy, his criticism is unworthy the attention of
persons who investigate all things and phenomena from the
standpoint of science, with honesty and without prejudice.
The cure of inebriety by my remedy has cured one hun-
dred and ten thousand insane people as well — except in the
alleged eighty-eight cases, more or less, given by Dr.
Evans, as reported by asylum superintendents. I am en-
tirely satisfied with the result. The world will be so, too.
I trust Dr. Evans can so far divest himself of his insane
prejudices as to join in the general satisfaction.
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SOME IMPORTANT PROBLEMS FOR CONGRESS
TO DEAL WITH IN ITS EXTRA SESSION.
BY A. C. FISK.
The cotton planters in the Southern States have been
holding conventions to consider the propriety of decreasing
the acreage of cotton and diversifying the crops of that sec-
tion. The object sought to be attained is the enhancement
of the price of cotton, because they believe that the cause of
decline in the price is over-production.
Prominent members of Congress have declared that one of
the first acts of the Fifty-third Congress should be to repeal
the bounty on sugar produced in this country, and restore
the tariff.
All the old countries fostered the sugar industry; especially
was this so in France and Germany. Napoleon issued a
decree directing the minister of the interior to set apart cer-
tain tracts of land, and to raise a sum of money necessary
for the formation of beet-sugar establishments, and the en-
couragement of the use of beet-root sugar. The king of
Persia the same yearr ordered practical schools for instruction
in the processes employed in the extraction of sugar from
sugar beets, and ordered that a large sum of money should
be appropriated to establish and maintain beet-sugar factories
and schools, where beet-sugar chemistry should be taught.
Napoleon, in his wisdom, continued substantial encourage-
ment of this and other agricultural and manufacturing in-
dustries in France by the appropriation of several millions of
francs at a time when the total revenue of his empire did
not exceed $200,000,000 in our money. With the downfall
of Napoleon, the industry he had fostered and established
received a check, but its value had been demonstrated. Its
growth in both France and Germany, which has been phe-
nomenal, was encouraged by giving bounties, and by a tariff
to prevent competition, which was practically prohibitive in
its character. Having been fostered by all means possible,
338
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SOME IM^OBTANT tKOBLEMS. 889
it has now reached a point where it is one of the chief
revenues of those governments.
The world's total supply of sugar is 6,400,000 tons, of
which 8,800,000 is made from beets and 2,600,000 from
cane, and of which the United States consumes 2,000,000
tons of 2,240 pounds, or about 70 pounds for each person;
1,400,000 tons of sugar has been imported into the United
States, at a cost of more than $125,000,000.
If the bounty is allowed to remain for the term specified
in the present law, to wit, until 1905, it is believed by that
time that 1,000 beet-sugar factories will be established in the
United States. Each factory will consume, say, 450 tons of
beets per day, 75 tons of coal, 45 tons of limestone, and 12
tons of coke. To produce that quantity of beets would
require 5,000 acres of ground for each factory, or 5,000,000
acres in all; the cultivation, harvesting, marketing, and
manufacturing of the beets into sugar, the mining and
handling of the coal and limestone, would require 13,000
people for each factory a portion of each year, or in all
13,000,000. Does it not seem the* part of wisdom to encour-
age and promote this industry?
As the imported sugar is carried by foreign merchant
ships, the price paid for sugar and its transportation would
amount to at least $145,000,000, which is added to the bal-
ance of trade against this country, and under present condi-
tions must be paid in gold.
By taking off the bounty and restoring the tariff, we add
two cents to the price of every pound of sugar consumed in
the United States, which is paid by the rich and poor alike.
Our statesmen pretend to legislate in the interests of all
classes ; but if the bounty is disturbed and replaced by a
tariff, the burden will fall heaviest upon the laboring classes.
The amount paid for foreign sugar equals the value of our
exports of wheat and flour. Our statesmen and farmers de-
claim in favor of a more diversified agriculture and better
farming. Here is a crop that will bring about both results.
To produce more cane, more sorghum, or more sugar beets is
not to increase an already existing surplus of these crops;
it is simply to furnish sugar to take the place of what we
now import.
There is another phase to be considered. The average
increase in consumption of sugar will in a few years require
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340 THE ABENA.
the payment to foreign countries of $150,000,000 to $200,-
000,000 annually for imported sugar if current prices are
maintained. The limit of beet-sugar production in Europe
is alleged to have been reached. The tropics would have to
supply much of the increased demand; and if an increase is
expected from those countries, it will come only through an
advance in price. Prudence would therefore dictate the
fostering of this industry in America, to provide against an
advance in price. The value of lands in this country would
be thus enhanced by millions of dollars, immigration would
be increased, and money distributed among our almost im-
poverished farmers, who would be enabled to retain their
farms and homes, which, under the present prices of wheat
and cotton, are likely to be swept from them under mort-
gage foreclosures.
The demonetization of silver has decreased the value of
all products in the United States more than 40 per cent.
The census of 1890 gives the value of the products of this
country at $13,000,000,000. Were silver restored to its
rightful place as money, these values would aggregate
$23,000,000,000, or practically the difference between the
bullion and coined value of silver. The farmers and plant-
ers of this country are therefore compelled to pay a bounty
of 40 per cent or more' on everything they produce, for the
reason that silver bullion is purchased at 83 cents and coined
into India rupees, which gives it a purchasing power of
$1.37 with which corn, cotton, and wheat are purchased in
India. The farmers of this country are thus compelled to
compete with the producers in India, the difference in price
being between 83 cents and $1.37.
This bounty is extorted from the producers of this nation
at the instance of the gold lords of the Old World and the
Shylocks of Wall Street. This depreciation in silver bullion
has depreciated the value of real estate and labor and the
product of labor one half. It has thrown out of employ-
ment 2,500,000 laborers, inflicting a direct loss to the wage-
earners in this country of $1,500,000,000 yearly. It has
filled our prisons with criminals and our asylums with
paupers and lunatics. As the prices of the crops raised in
this country for exportation will not now bring the cost of
production, the fanners will be compelled to produce only
such crops as are required for home consumption.
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SOME IMPOBTANT PBOBLBMS. 841
At the time of the Baring failure, England, in order to
return to France the money which she was obliged to borrow
to save every banking institution in England from closing
its doors, drained this country of $75,000,000 in a few
months, and our country was very nearly convulsed with
financial disaster. Tet that amount is only about one half
as much as is sent out of this country every year for the
one item of sugar, which does not create a ripple in the
exchanges of our commerce.
Suppose the government were to pay two cents a pound
as a bounty on all the sugar imported into this country, it
would amount to only a little over $60,000,000. This tax
would fall largely on the rich, who have become so by reason
of vicious legislation causing the demonetization of silver,
which has taxed the farmer every dollar of his profits, until
the burden has become so great that he is unable longer to
endure it. The encouragement of the sugar industry would
enable the farmer to realize a profit with which he could
pay his interest and save his home. This should interest
those holding the mortgages equally with the mortgage
debtor; for unless some relief comes to the now over-bur-
dened tillers of the soil, the creditors may look in vain for
payment of either interest or principal.
Diversified crops, and the producing only of such as are
required for home consumption, might tend to bring the
money lenders of the world to their senses, and make them
consent that Congress should restore silver, and thereby
enhance the value of these crops so that they could again be
produced in this country for exportation, as the foreign
countries are compelled to draw on the United States for
their breadstuffs.
The United States is the sugar country of the future. In
Germany, where most of the sugar is produced, land is worth
from $250 to $750 per acre; it costs at least $25 per acre
each year to fertilize it, and the sugar product does not
average to exceed 13 per cent, while in this country the
average is much higher. What is to prevent us, there-
fore, from becoming exporters of sugar instead of paying
$145,000,000 a year for foreign sugar and placing that
amount to the debit of our trade balances, instead of an equal
amount to our credit?
The party in power swept the country under the promise
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842 THE ARENA.
of a tariff reform. That, like all the questions embraced in
party platforms, was a mere subterfuge to catch voters. The
money question is the principal issue before the American
people, and the leaders of both the old parties and their con-
federates across the water know it. But tariff reform caught
the votes ; and the party in power may attempt, by repealing
the bounty and imposing a tax on sugar, to raise a revenue ;
but when they do so, they may find that the laboring man,
who pays 2 cents a pound more for his sugar, will fail
to appreciate that kind of tariff reform. The tariff might be
increased somewhat by adding $1 per gallon to the 125,000,-
000 gallons of whiskey now in bond, and an additional tax
of the same amount on other spirits, which would amount to
as much more, or $250,000,000, and no one would feel the
burden.
The folly of decreasing the acreage of cotton is apparent
when we consider that, were silver restored, the price of cot-
ton would be enhanced in value as much as the difference
between the bullion and coined value of silver. What the
Southern planter desires is an increase in price, not a
decrease in acreage. The decrease in acreage would have no
effect on the price. Before the demonetization of silver,
India was not a competitor in wheat, cotton, corn, or manu-
factured products ; but as silver bullion declined, the trade
of India increased, until now that country exports about
100,000,000 bushels of wheat and more than $100,000,000
worth of cotton annually, which is at least or 7. third of the
value of the cotton crop of the United Stater^%*Therefore it
would seem certain, with silver restored, that the United
States could produce 1,200,000 bales of cotton at a market
price not less than 16 cents per pound, which would yield
the cotton grower more than three times what he now
receives for his cotton crop.
Six hundred million dollars added to the bank accounts of
the cotton growers of the South would enable them to pay
their interest and principal to the gold lords in a few years.
The restoration of silver as money would furnish this coun-
try with a market for more than double the breadstuffs it
now exports, and the price would also be doubled, which
would add at least $500,000,000 to the value of the bread-
stuffs we export. This would enable the wheat grower of
the Northwest to pay his interest and a portion of his princi-
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SOME IMPORTANT PROBLEMS. 343
pal. The exports of other farm crops would be correspond-
ingly increased, so that the bondholders across the water and
those in the East might feel reasonably sure of securing the
interest, and, in time, the principal of their loans.
It is true that this enormous wealth production in this
country would pay the national and private debts of the
country, the very thing that the bondholders in Europe are
trying to prevent. If they succeed a few years longer in
keeping the price of the farm products of this country below
the cost of production, the farms will all pass into the hands
of those holding the mortgages.
This will produce absolute stagnation, bankruptcy, and
ruin in this country. >
The independent farmers of Great Britain and Germany,
when the gold standard was adopted, entirely disappeared,
just as they will disappear in the United States. Not only
the United States, but the whole world, is bankrupt on a
gold basis. If we depended on gold and silver, we should be
bankrupt on both, as there is not now and never will be
enough gold and silver in the world to transact its business.
More than $1,500,000,000 has been discarded and supplied
for reserves with gold since silver was demonetized; and
there are those who affect to believe that this must continue,
and that the world must transact its business on $3,500,-
000,000 — less than $2 per capita.
There are those claiming to be bimetallists who advocate
the free coinage of the American product only. If the spirit
of the present law were carried out literally, and all the silver
coined, that would be practical free coinage of the American
product. This might possibly increase the value of silver
bullion, but it would not bring material relief to the laborers
and producers of this country. The free and unlimited coin-
age of silver is necessary to accomplish that.
The Mexican dollar is received for goods in Europe at
about 64 cents, while the Central American dollar is re-
ceived for 80 or 85 cents. If this country were to adopt
free coinage, all the silver-using countries would coin their
silver at our mints, for the reason that they could purchase
100 cents worth of goods in the United States for 371 grains
of pure silver, while they could purchase only 65 or 75 cents'
worth of goods with the same amount in England, Germany,
and France, That would give this country the entire trade
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344 THE ARENA.
of all the silver-producing countries of the world, unless the
gold-standard countries rehabilitated silver.
This shows the fallacy of supposing that we require an
international monetary agreement. What we need is a little
courage and honesty on the part of our congressmen and
executive officers; more legislation in the interests of our
own people, and less in the interests of the Shylocks of the
Old World. The gold lords have ruled us too long for our
good. The legislation they have given us has been wholly
in their own interest and against the interest of the debtors
and produ<j jrs. The bounty on sugar escaped their vigilance,
but they must not be allowed to repeal it.
The merchants of this country cannot expect to maintain
their business, for the reason that the producers cannot get
money enough to pay their interest, much less buy goods.
The manufacturer cannot hope to find a market for his man-
ufactured article when there is no money with which to buy.
It is a mistaken and short-sighted policy for the money
lenders, merchants, and manufacturers of the East to burden
the people of the West until they have no money with which
to pay interest or purchase goods. The conspiracy which the
Eastern States entered into with the Shylocks of the Old
World to force down the value of farm products $1,250,000,-
000, so that the East might reap the advantage of about one
third of the amount, has proved an unprofitable investment,
for the reason that the producer can no longer pay interest
nor purchase goods.
If silver were restored, the money lender would get his
interest, and the Eastern merchants and manufacturers
would sell billions of dollars' worth of goods more than they
sell now, and their profits would more than double and
quadruple the amount of which they rob the Western farmer
by confederating with their allies across the water to depre-
ciate the value of farm products. It is to the interest of the
people in the East, to say nothing of the moral side of the
question, to give the farmer justice.
The full remonetization of silver would simply place this
country where it was before it was demonetized. That is
what the people demand. It was demonetized without the
wish, knowledge, or consent of the people of this country or
their representatives in Congress. Only one man in the
Senate and one in the House knew when it was done. The
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SOME IMPOETANT PBOBLEMS. 345
people simply demand that that crime shall be undone.
That would arrest the fall of prices, would give stability
to merchants', manufacturers', farmers', and traders' profits,
and induce them to enlarge their business. It would stimu-
late industry, revive trade, increase the demand for labor, and
improve profits and wages in accordance with the natural
laws of supply and demand.
The American carrying trade, which has steadily decreased
for many years, should also be revived. In 1860 it was more
than $500,000,000. Now it is considerably less than $200,-
000,000; while the foreign carrying trade has increased from
$200,000,000, in 1860, to $1,200,000,000, in 1890. This
accounts, in part, for the balance of trade against the United
States. With this trade revived, with the increase in value
of the farm products of this country, and the increase in
trade from foreign silver-using countries, the balance would
likely be billions of dollars in favor of the United States.
We should no longer be a debtor nation ; there would be
no scramble for gold, no call for the issue of more bonds,
and no oppression of the producing classes. We should manu-
facture our own sugar; we should save a billion dollars now
being paid out in carrying trade, and another billion in the
enhanced value of our products; silver, gold, and paper
would all be money of equal value ; and it would make no
difference what kind of money we sent abroad to pay for our
imports. Our exports would be such, that the rest of the
world would be concerned to get our money to go abroad,
that they might have something with which to buy our
products.
As we are now the greatest producing nation of the
world, we should then become the wealthiest. Instead of
being a debtor we should become a creditor. Tardy justice
would come, in part, to the producers, and peace and pros-
perity would again bless our land.
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A PRACTICAL VIEW OF THE MIND CURE.
BY JOSEPH L. HASBROUCK.
If my neighbor wishes to employ a homoeopathic physician
for his sick child, he does not think it necessary to first
inquire into the theories of Hahnemann and convince him-
self of their credibility. Neither does he, if inclined to
allopathy, inform himself concerning the early sanguinary
practices and the heroic doses of that much-respected school
of medicine. His child is suffering. Dr. Brown has suc-
cessfully treated one and another of his acquaintances.
What are theories to him, in this hour of danger, if his
practice be acceptable ?
Electricity, massage, the water and rest cures, compound
oxygen, Turkish and sulphur baths, not to mention innumer-
able proprietary remedies, — each and all have set up their
claims as panaceas of human ills, and each bases its claim on
a different theory. Yet over and over again, A buys a bottle
of Runkle's Rheumatic Relief, not because he understands
the theory advanced by its proprietor, or believes, if he
understands it, but simply because he has B's evidence,
founded on personal experience, as to its efficacy. The cure
is all that he cares for; he wastes no time on the theory.
He realizes the sharp twinges of pain, and an Indian medi-
cine-man or a howling dervish would be heartily welcomed
if successful in driving away the disease.
For more than two thousand years, men have been study-
ing the action of drugs on the human body. The disciples
of iEsculapius made votive offerings in the temples of the
gods, of all new remedies discovered by them. Machaon,
whom Homer calls "that much-honored leach," healed the
wounds of Menelaus by applying soothing balsam. Hippoc-
rates, " the father of the art of medicine," sturdily studied
out weighty tomes of prescriptions, anticipating that they
would be of untold value for centuries to come; but they are
now little more than literary curiosities, The accumulated
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THE MIND CURE. 347
results of all the medical men before the time of Queen Bess
were so unsatisfactory, that Lord Bacon could write, and
with truth : " Medicine is a science which hath been more
professed than labored, the labor having been, in my judg-
ment, rather in circle than progression. For I find much
iteration but small addition."* And of the physicians:
44 Although a man would think, by the daily visitations of the
physicians, that there was a pursuance in the cure, yet let a
man look into their prescripts and ministrations, and he shall
find them but inconstancies and every day's devices, without
any settled providence or project."! Some, even many,
of the most thoughtful and well-educated medical men of
our own day, confess that much of their practice is
experimental. The use of drugs, even those whose proper-
ties and effects have been most carefully studied, is often
futile, and is so confessed by honest practitioners.
Since these theories, which have been undergoing the test
of actual practice in the human family for two thousand
years and more, fail in so many cases, he is a wise man who
is willing to give, at least, a fair trial to a new method of
dealing with diseases, represented, in this instance, by the
metaphysical healer, who claims that the source of all physical
disorder is to be found in the mind, and that the surest and
most rational method of cure is that which is based on this
principle.
The exceeding absurdity of very much that has been
written concerning the application of mental science to the
art of healing, cannot be denied. There are many blatant,
would-be scientists, who are daily bringing reproach in this
way upon the cause which they are attempting to advance.
It cannot be denied that many having neither the ability to
comprehend nor the good judgment to apply its principles,
have attached themselves to this method of healing, as have
many similar persons attempted to practise in the various
schools of medicine, and with similar success. Like many
another science in the days of its infancy, it has been wounded
in the house of its friends. One of the most conscientious
and successful mental healers in the country expresses a wise
sentiment, when he says that hard work, not idle prating of
visionary theories, is to make the mind cure a success, and
• " Advancement of Learning." Ed. by B. Montagu, p. 171.
t Idem, p. 177.
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348 THE ARENA.
the metaphysician a respected practitioner, instead of a
despised mountebank.
But what school of medicine has not passed through a
similar experience ? So late as the seventeenth century, Dr.
Sydenham, "the English Hippocrates," with the experience of
twenty centuries at his back, gravely writes out, for the
benefit of beginners in the practice of medicine, the follow-
ing prescription for the gout (and as he was a great sufferer
from that disease, we may presume that he had tested its
efficacy): "O Jupiter, aid us! [We use Charles Reade's
translation of the astrological sign of Jupiter, still employed
by physicians in the year of our Lord, 1889.] Root of
angelica, sweet-flag, masterwort, elecampane, leaves of mug-
wort, lesser centaury, white horehound, germander, ground
pine, scordium, calamint, feverfew, meadow saxifrage, St.
John's wort, golden-rod, wild thyme, mint, sage, rue, carduus
Benedictus, pennyroyal, southernwood, flowers of chamomile,
tansy, lily of the valley, English saffron, seeds of penny-
cress, garden scurvy-grass, caraways, and juniper berries."
These are to be dried, mixed with honey and Canary wine,
made into "an electuary of due consistence . . . secundem
artem . . . and two drachms taken every night and
morning." *
For the treatment of pleurisy, he quaintly says: "My
sheet-anchor is venesection. As soon as I am sent for I
bleed from the arm to ten ounces or more . . . and in rheu-
matism the same, followed by the same amount the day
following, repeated a day or two after, according to the
strength of the patient. Three or four days after, I bleed
for the fourth time, and this bleeding is generally the last."
He sorrowfully adds : "I have often tried to think out some
plan of cure without such expense of blood. I have, how-
ever, failed in finding any treatment like the aforesaid." f
For whooping cough, ophthalmia, colic, St. Vitus' dance, and
small-pox, Dr. Sydenham finds nothing better than venesec-
tion. In the Pharmacopoeia Londonensis of 1682, the famous
" Theriaca Andromachi " is given, a prescription containing
sixty-five ingredients.
In the year 1739, by act of the English Parliament, one
Joanna Stephens, a thrifty Englishwoman, was given the sum
• " Works of Sydenham." Vol. ii., p. 136.
t " History and Heroes of Medicine." By J. R. Russell, M. D., p. 263.
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THE MIND CURE. 349
of five thousand pounds for a prescription of her own inven-
tion which was reported to have wrought marvellous cures.
The medicines were in the form of pills, powders, and decoc-
tion. The pills consisted of " snails, calcined, wild carrot-
seed, burdock-seed, ashen keys, hips and haws, all burnt to a
blackness, with soap and honey." Very minute directions
for making the preparations were given by the wise Joanna,
and the able commission which had been delegated by
Parliament to inquire into the particulars of cures effected
by these remarkable compounds, announced that they were
fully satisfied as to the "Utility, Efficacy, and Dissolving
Power thereof" — two M. D.'s, however, refusing assent to
the last specification.* Dr. Jones of Ann Arbor instances a
prescription written by an allopathic physician in 1879, in
which iodine, potassium, tolu, ipecacuanha, veratrum viride,
morphia, bromine, sodium, mercury, cinchona, iron, aloes,
hyoscyamus, and nux vomica were administered to an
epileptic patient at one time, though in different preparations.
No longer ago than 1858, homoeopathy was classed among
the humbugs of the day, and was held up to even greater
derision than any modern school or system of healing has
been — and apparently with reason. The writings of its
founder, Hahnemann, abound in absurdities, than which no
greater have been printed on this topic. Here is a quotation
from the " Organon," p. 141, " Psora is the sole, true, and
fundamental cause that produces all the other countless
forms of disease which, under the names of epilepsy, gout,
asthma, etc., appear in our pathology as so many peculiar,
distinct, and independent diseases." And again: " Of late I
have become convinced that smelling imparts a medicinal
influence, as energetic and as long continued as when the
medicine is taken in substance by the mouth, and, at the
same time, that its operation is more gentle than when
administered by the latter mode. It is therefore requisite
that the intervals for repeating the smelling should not be
shorter than those prescribed for taking the medicine in a
more substantial form." In the " Materia Medica," he says,
44 Smelling of a pellet of opium, of the thirtieth potency,
removes the effects of recent frights, were they ever so vio-
lent, almost instantaneously, but only when the smelling is
resorted to immediately after the fright."
• " Book about Doctors." By J. C. Jeaffreson, p. 286.
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350 ?££ ABENA.
The process of preparing the original grain of the homoeo-
pathic dose, and the manipulations and " shakes " necessary
to bring it to the various dilutions from the thirtieth to the
decillionth development of power; are, to the uneducated eye,
almost too absurd for belief.
Notice, also, some of the symptoms which Hahnemann
attributes to the action of drugs, with which he experimented
largely, on healthy bodies. The quotations are taken at ran-
dom from the " Materia Medica," where may be found whole
pages of equally absurd statements, rivalling the most foolish
conclusions of the weakest mental healer: " After having
written a long time with the back bent over, violent pain in
the back and shoulders as if from a strain." "Dreams
which are not remembered; disposition to mental dejection;
wakefulness before and after midnight." "After dinner,
disposition to sleep; the patient winks." " Unusually long
sleep with the eyelids closed." "Tearing pain behind the
left ear." "Vexed about trifles." "Sleep with merry
dreams." " falls asleep as soon as he lies down." "Dreams
of murder, of black cats."
Pages might be filled with equally trivial and absurd
matter, taken from the writings of famous physicians of any
school of medicine. But despite such beginnings, both
allopathy and homoeopathy are to-day studied, practised, and
believed in by some of the wisest and most sensible men in
the world, and accomplish cures. Over and over again, do
the physicians fail in making diagnoses; and over and over
again do they treat for the wrong disease, in some instances
a very diverse one, as the post-mortem examinations reveal.
Sometimes their mistakes are discovered in season, sometimes
they are not. As frequently do physicians administer use-
less remedies. Not many years ago, in one of the best
medical schools in this country, a hospital patient was treated
for a stomach trouble of unusual nature, and was pronounced
incurable. His symptoms were constantly reported upon
and used as a basis for lectures by students and professors;
and I have the word of one of these students, now a physi-
cian of note, that a post-mortem examination revealed the
astonishing fact that the stomach was in perfect condition,
and the seat of the disease was found to be in the brain.
Similar cases, among practitioners of less note, are too
common to need repetition. The wisest of them lay no
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(THE MINt> CURES. 351
claim to infallibility. Their patrons gladly accept their
services, with the full consciousness of the possibility, even
at times a very strong probability, of failure.
Two classes of writers have attempted to present the
theories of metaphysical healing to the public. To the first
belong the numerous teachers of all degrees of incompe-
tency, with whom the country is just now flooded, whose
books and pamphlets, although containing some things wise
and helpful, are yet so saturated with absurdity as to repel
readers of sense. Writers of the second class are also
numerous, and are far more aggravating than the first
named. These refuse to note any distinction between faith-
healing, Christian science, and mental healing ; and, indeed,
some go so far as to include clairvoyant healers in the same
category. Starting with false premises, they naturally come
to lame and impotent conclusions. They are bitter oppo-
nents of new ideas of any sort, and persist in holding up to
ridicule the absurdities of a few metaphysicians, quite ignor-
ing what is meritorious. If, following their example, and
considering the facts and quotations above cited, we disregard
the excellences and successes of Hippocrates, Galen, Syden-
ham, and Hahnemann, who shall say that the adherents of the
metaphysical school in this, the first decade of its existence,
are not at least as sensible and as worthy of attention, as
were their elder -brethren during the first centuries of the
practice of medicine ?
The careful student of mental science, who has taken a
prescribed series of lessons under a thoughtful teacher, is not
found deriding the mind cure. Ridicule comes alone from
those whose ideas have been derived from reading imperfect
presentations of the subject, or from those who condemn a
thing which seems to them incredible, without investigation.
The true mental scientist knows that it is as impossible for a
man to come into the full understanding of the laws of his
profession in the course of a single conversation, or by read-
ing a book on the subject, as it would be for him to compre-
hend conic sections or the laws of surgical or legal practice,
with the same amount of study.
The great and insurmountable obstacle to the conclusions
of the enemies of metaphysical healing is found in the
record of multitudes of cures which are every day being
performed in all parts of the country, by men and women
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352 THE ARENA.
having no knowledge whatever of medicine, but with un-
swerving faith in the truth of their system. Many are
unwilling to acknowledge openly that to which they owe a
debt of gratitude. A prominent lawyer, whose shattered
health has been fully restored, went to the metaphysician,
like Nicodemus of old, by night, dreading the reproach of
his brethren, should it be known that he haid availed himself
of the new practice. Stories of cures are told under the
breath, so general is the ridicule excited by their repetition.
A lady of sufficient mental ability to write " That Lass o'
Lowrie's " and " Little Lord Fauntleroy " is not ashamed to
attribute her recovered health to this source, and others need
not be. Candid people are fast coming to believe that the
metaphysician possesses a power in some way unusual.
To-day we hear of a bed-ridden victim of spinal disease,
whose life has been made miserable by the application of
hot irons and plaster jackets, now brought into * the full
enjoyment of perfect health. She does not sneer at the
mind cure. She may not understand its theories. Neither
does she understand how the grain, whose products sustain
her life, grows to perfection in the field; or any other of the
myriad mysteries of the natural world. In the words of the
man into whose darkened life our Saviour brought light, she
may say, " One thing I know, whereas I was blind, now I
see." Yesterday, an idolized child, dying of diphtheria, given
up by the best physicians of a large city, was healed by the
skilful, persistent efforts of a metaphysician of ability. Last
year, a loved teacher whose life had been filled with good
works, was told to set her house in order, for but a short
time remained for her to live. An insidious and apparently
incurable disease had brought her low, and the best medical
aid failed to relieve her. Six weeks later she met her friends
on the street, and gave all praise to the metaphysician who
had saved her life.
Numerous instances of insanity, of depraved appetite for
spirituous liquors and morphine, and of other cases usually
considered beyond the reach of an ordinary physician, yield,
often readily, to this method of treatment. A poor girl,
whose bondage to eczema rendered her life one of unhappy
exile, is to-day a happy, smooth-faced child. Similar cases
are almost numberless ; yet their further enumeration, while
easily credited by one who has been healed by like means,
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THE MIND CUBE. 353
might appear to others incredible. The assertion is fre-
quently made, with regard to a case of mental cure, that
recovery would have ensued without the treatments. The
same objection might, with equal propriety, be made to the
practice of medicine, and any physician would consider such
a conclusion unfair when applied to his services.
One important fact — the basal one, indeed, since nothing
can be effected by the metaphysician without it — is generally
ignored by the opponents of his system. It is understood
that allusion is made, in this paper, to mental healing, pure
and simple, without reference to what is named " Christian
science." It is a positive necessity to the metaphysician,
that he be made thoroughly acquainted with all the disturb-
ing incidents which may have entered into the life of his
patient. On these he must depend to find the causa of that
mental disease from which, according to his theory, the
physical has proceded. A sudden calamity, rendering
healthy mental processes impossible for a time ; a long-con-
tinued state of anxiety or suspense which has consumed the
vitality, and caused an abnormal condition of mind, and its
reflection in the body; — each and all of these the mental
healer diligently seeks out, and his work is sometimes ren-
dered ineffectual because of failure to confide some matter of
importance. Not unfrequently, ante-natal influences must
be taken into account. The picture of fright or distress
being erased from the mind, where it may have been linger-
ing for yeai$, at the same time the distressing physical symp-
toms which resulted from it will disappear also, and the
same cause will never again produce the same effect. It is
not claimed that the patient will never again be sick. A
man who has been cured of rheumatism may contract and
die of consumption or heart disease. The best of regular
physicians, so-called, do not guarantee the life-long immunity
from disease which some demand of the metaphysician.
But has not the day passed for intelligent men and women
to deny the evidence of their senses, and to look with
narrow prejudice upon a system which is apparently destined
to work such gratifying changes in the healing of disease ?
Who that has been cured by this method, so quiet, safe, and
effectual in its operations, wishes to return to the wearisome
allopathic experiments of pills and powders, or to the con-
stant hourly bondage to little pellets, which homoeopathy
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354 fHB abeKA.
entails ? Shall we not be willing to test the new system as
practised by its most studious and conservative disciples, and
not fear to be classed with " minds prone to vagaries border-
ing on insanity," if thereby we may be freed from the
dread thraldom of disease ? The words of Dr. Constantine
Hering, in concluding his translation of Hahnemann's " Or-
ganon," may well be quoted here: "As through war we come
to the possession of peace, so in the world of science,
through conflict and trial we come to the possession of
truth. It was an old motto of Luther's, ' Lass die Geister
auf einander platzenS "
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flOW TO RALLY TIE HOSTS OP FREEDOM.
BY HENRY FRANK.
A certain exalting fervor seizes one on reading the two
inspiring articles in the current and in a recent issue of The
Arena by B. O. Flower and Louis Ehric respectively, both
looking toward a possible organization of the untrammelled
hearts and intellects of the age, for the moral and mental
uplift of the race, and the concentration of now scattered
energies in one united and momentous effort for human
amelioration. The end hinted at is certainly " a consumma-
tion devoutly to be wished." For the last two hundred
years the tendency of freedom in thought and speech has
been toward disintegration and demoralization. So long has
conventionality fastened every moral conviction to a religious
dogma or a theological menace, that when the mind has
revolted and declared its freedom, the heart has tended to
weaken its ethical impulses, and the disenthralled soul has
sunk all too soon into the slough of moral despondency and
physical indulgence.
Religion was the basis of morals. Without religion a man
could not be pure in heart. The godless man was the good-
less man. Hence the strong hold of religious enthralment,
hence the slavery of man to mere superstition and ecclesi-
astical autocracy. The fear was natural. So long as men
believed that if they fell from grace — meaning thereby that
if they declared their freedom from religious dogma — they
would certainly fall, like Satan, into the bottomless pit,
never to rise again, the immediate effect of freedom was
defiance, selfishness, indulgence. If they must reap the
whirlwind hereafter,' as well sow the wind now — in short,
when once the freedom of self was asserted, all fear cast
aside, the tendency was too frequently to deny the laws of
nature as well as the alleged laws of religion, and, having
become godless, to become goodless indeed.
Freedom became intellectual anarchy ; scepticism degen-
865
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356 THE ARENA.
erated into rowdy infidelity; the pure glow of religious
fervor was transformed into the white heat of passion and
sensual indulgence, and the child of God had indeed become
the child of the devil. This was the age of mere iconoclasm,
of disintegration, demoralization, destruction ; the age of the
intellectual bull in the religious china shop; this was the
age when the church ruled supreme as autocrat, vicegerent,
pope ; the age when to think was to sin, to love was to blush
with shame, to be natural was to be devilish, to be a human
being was to renounce the Christ.
What wonder that the first sense of freedom which came
to man in such an age was the sense of defiance, anger,
hatred, stubbornness, and self-indulgence ! What wonder that
man, having so long been a dupe and slave, should seek and
indulge in the very pleasures wfiich the tyranny of ecclesi-
asticism had so long denied him ! If to think was to sin, if
to love was to become shameless, having once become nat-
ural and therefore having fallen, hell being the sure and
swift reward, what wonder the suddenly disenthralled slave
should run on madly toward every indulgence into final
destruction ! Therefore the first effect of freedom from the
bigotry of dogma and churchism is toward the danger line of
self-indulgence and pleasurable materialism. Olive Schreiner,
in her sad but thoughtful " African Farm," beautifully de-
picts this tendency toward the valley of sensuality in the
ethical evolution of her hero.
But for the last one hundred years man has been slowly
learning that he may be good without God. Of course by
the term " God " I mean a certain limited and determinative
interpretation insisted upon in the creed. He has learned
that the moral instinct is founded in natural laws; is the
climax of the slow evolution of forces ; is not the formal gift
of a Supreme Being, but the assertion of the ideal in human-
ity seeking through the ages for its realization and expres-
sion. He has learned that the creed of the church is simply
an appeal for intellectual assent, without granting the pre-
rogative of individual judgment and ratiocination. Faith is
merely mental passivity, submission without investigation or
comprehension. A dogma is a brain child, though withal
a monstrosity. The creed seeks only the slavery of the
intellect, but has no authority over the heart. You may
compel people to believe, but you cannot compel them to
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HOW TO BALLY THE HOSTS OF FREEDOM. 357
feel. The head is not the slave of the heart, nor is the heart
the slave of the head. They are two autonomies ; they are
mutually free and independent. Therefore, though the mind
yield a passive submission, the heart may still indulge its
hope and buoyancy. Though the mind assent to that which
compels its bondage, the heart may still aspire toward the
realms of freedom. The head may bow to the halter — the
heart still declares its innocence; the head may become a
monk — the heart is still human. It is this acknowledged
freedom between head and heart which affords the basis of
the new ethics of the age.
Man now knows he may be intellectually free without
necessarily ignoring the laws of nature which conserve his
integrity and correct development. The age is distinctly
utilitarian and practical. Sin is now defined, not as a viola-
tion of the commands of God, but of the laws of health and
life. To fall from grace is not to disbelieve in Deity and
Christ, but to indulge in such behavior as honeycombs the
foundations of manhood and disintegrates the nobler char-
acter. The individual is his own saviour and his own
destroyer ; in this sense, his own god and his own devil.
Therefore he alone builds his heaven — digs his hell. The
hereafter is the present ; the eternal is the now. Therefore,
the individual is self-responsible; he cannot curse God or
the devil for his fate; he is what he chooses to be. With
such an ethic fear eliminated, the tyranny of authority
vanishes ; the dream of heaven, the nightmare of hell, find
exemplification alone in ideal endeavor and in moral degen-
eracy ; the torch of freedom does not burn with the offensive
sulphur of Gehenna; the searchlights of science do not
brighten the way for the devil and his angels to the goal of
everlasting damnation. When freedom is without a sting,
and knowledge hides no wasp in its fragrant bosom, then
surely is dogma dethroned, and superstition, born of igno-
rance, forever banished.
Thus this age becomes the very " trysting time " of the
sons and daughters of freedom's approaching millennium.
Columbia's name may yet become the fairest among the
daughters of time, if on her free soil shall be inaugurated and
successfully consummated the movement which shall unite,
with common purpose and for the common weal, all who
claim their birthright and assert their independence.
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358 THE ARENA.
Such were the thoughts which thrilled me, as I read the
articles above referred to.
If I may be pardoned a personal digression, I may«ay
that my own experience, along the lines of organization and
endeavor outlined by Mr. Flower in his article, convinces
me that the age is singularly ripe for such a movement, and,
that, if a concerted effort is put forth, a universal response
will be received. It is to state briefly my experience and
the lessons it has taught, which may prove fruitful in this
awakening, that I am prompted to write this article.
When I was settled as a pastor over an Orthodox church
in a town of some twenty thousand people in Western New
York, a change of belief and conviction slowly crept upon
me, which naturally found expression in my public utter-
ances and ultimately caused me to relinquish my pulpit.
Though intending to migrate to a foreign " vineyard," I was
unexpectedly called upon to resurrect a defunct independent
organization in the same city, which had been founded in
revolt against the churches and the creed, yet was, in all
respects, itself a religious society.
When I entered upon the labors of this free pulpit, I
cautioned my hearers that I would suffer no limitations to be
put mpon my reason or research, and that I would freely
utter every conviction which possessed me, though it might
be in absolute variance with popular acceptance and conven-
tionality. The result was, that beginning as a semi-orthodox
minister, I closed my labors as a radical preacher of a pro-
nounced type, proclaiming without halt or hindrance what-
ever appeared to me as the deductions of truth. Instead of
scattering the audiences, this method seemed only to increase
them. Full a thousand people were connected, directly and
indirectly, with the movement. I finally organized the
society on a purely ethical basis, formulating a mere bond of
fellowship devoid of any religious or theological character-
istics. This society was established in a town so orthodox
and conservative that the seating capacity of its various
churches was sufficient to accommodate fully a quarter of the
entire population; yet the attendance on the Sunday meetings
of this secular movement was the most numerous of any of
the congregations in the city. The influence of this society
spread throughout Western New York and Eastern Pennsyl-
vania. I received invitations from numerous towns and
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HOW TO BALLY THE HOSTS OF FREEDOM. 359
villages to " come over to Macedonia " and build up similar
associations in those localities. Could I have had at the
time .a sufficient number of assistants and a sufficient fund to
assure the undertaking, I could easily have organized a score
of such societies within a comparatively small circumference.
This convinced me that the harvest was indeed ripe, even in
the smallest communities, though, alas^ the laborers were far
too few.
In connection with the movement I organized various
week-day "schools": such as a "School of Literature," in
which the epochal books or works of the hour were studied,
as well as standard works of eminent authors; a "'School of
Evolution," for the study of the philosophy and science of
evolution in its various branches; a "School of Economics,"
for the unbiased study of sociology and the living political
and economic problems; a " School of the Open Bible," for
the study of the " Higher Criticism " and of the Bible as a
literary work; a "School of All Religions," for the investiga-
tion of the world's religions along the lines of Max Miiller
and the Orientalists.
To my surprise, the hungry audiences which thronged to
these week-night meetings almost rivalled the Sunday con-
gregations in numbers, and excelled them in enthusiasm and
earnestness. My own limitations, however, in endeavoring,
single-handed, to carry out so extensive a programme, caused
these latter experiments to be only partially successful. The
town was too far removed from any of the great metropolitan
or educational centres to enable me to call upon others to
come to my assistance. Nevertheless, the continued success
of the general movement amazed me. The society exists to
this day.
I abandoned the work, for personal reasons, not quite three
years ago, though, I regret to say, under new management
the present tendency in the organization seems to be to enter
the ranks of one of the liberal denominations. This I think
an error, notwithstanding the one felt weakness of the
entire venture was the sense of ostracism, the want of fellow-
ship, the consciousness of being alone in the world. I often
felt that a call for organization throughout the country
would develop numerous centres of similar effort, and by a
common consent some kind of union could be formulated,
90 that meetings for mutual encouragement might be con-
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360 THE ABENA.
ducted. Directly every village^ hamlet, town, and city
throughout the nation is organized on the basis of freedom
and fellowship such as Mr. Flower indicates in The Arena,
the age of the new reformation and the new evangelization
will have been inaugurated; for I must mention one more
point of interest.
It may be supposed that the people who congregate in
such movements are either the intellectually dilettante, who
are interested in no philanthropic work, or the crowd of nihil-
istic agitators, who are mere destructionists, and have neither
reverence for truth nor sympathy with the race. On the
contrary, I found among thes'fe people — many of them hav-
ing broken away from the established churches, many of
them having never been members or even attendants of any
church — the most zealous, eager, and enthusiastic laborers
in the field of philanthropy and reform of any people with
whom I was ever associated, in all the years of my ministry.
Though antagonized by all the churches in the most viru-
lent and bitter fashion, nevertheless the women organized
themselves into the " Women's Auxiliary," for social, finan-
cial, and similar purposes; into a "Society of the Good
Shepherd," for the help of the destitute and the outcast; into
a " Terpsichorean Society" of young people, for purposes of
social gayety, dancing, and amateur theatrical performances.
The children were organized into a society of " Sunbeams,"
and many other similar branches were developed.
In every section of the field, enthusiasm, courage, inde-
pendence, and persistent victory prevailed. More than this,
and what is even more pleasing, the little feuds and squab-
bles so common in village church societies were utterly
unknown in this community of religious radicals. I speak
of all these details because the experiment proved that such
societies may successfully carry forward every department of
work with as great, if not greater, success than the churches
are accustomed to, though devoid of every religious motive
or theological menace.
Now, what of the future ? and what of the bugle call for
world-wide organization which Mr. Flower's ringing article
gives voice to ?
Emphatically let me plant myself on the side of those who
declare for the possibility and successful issue of such an
effort. I firmly believe all that is needed at this hour is for
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HOW TO RALLY THE HOSTS OF FREEDOM. 361
a general concerted movement to be made, and the response
will come from every quarter of our country, if not from over
the entire globe. Travelling, as I do, far and wide, I every-
where feel the pulse of the people, and everywhere the cry
is heard, " How can we organize to benefit our fellow-man,
while still asserting our intellectual freedom and religious
independence ? "
Permit me to make a few suggestions. First of all, let
the editor of The Arena in the near future call a prelimi-
nary conference at his office of such people as may be inter-
ested in organizing a parent or charter society, to become a
nucleus for the unfoldment of the larger scheme. This con-
ference might discuss ways and means, might issue a pro-
gramme of yearly courses of study for the various branches
to pursue ; might discuss, and possibly formulate, a statement
of principles for which the federation shall stand; might
initiate a national fund for publishing and disseminating
literature in the nature of tracts, books, etc., in furtherance
of the propaganda ; might outline the programmes for the
initial rally and subsequent meetings during the first week
of the coming year hereinafter proposed; in shorty might Lay
a rational, intelligible, and comprehensive foundation for the
rearing of this glorious structure of humanitarian labor for
which we are all yearning. Let us decide upon Christmas
Eve, 1893, which, fortunately, falls upon a Sunday, as the
night on which the rallying of all of the hosts of freedom,
justice, and philanthropy, regardless of church, sect, or dogma,
shall take place. It further occurs to me that a very direct
way to reach this end would be for the readers and subscrib-
ers of The Arena, in every city and village of the nation,
to seek at once to become mutually acquainted, and to
arrange among themselves for the proposed assembly on the
approaching Christmas Eve. No greater, no more valiant or
inspiring, champion in literature for such a movement can be
found than The Arena, under the guidance of its brilliant
editor. It ought at once to insure the success of this move-
ment that it is backed by a great journal, a world-famed
monthly, which stands ready to assist and forward its every
effort.
Perhaps the publishers of The Arena would be willing
to issue tracts containing Mr. Flower's and Mr. Ehric's
articles, and such other material as would be available, and
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362 THE ARENA.
distribute them, with an accompanying bugle call for organ-
ization, to all the subscribers of the monthly. Packages of
such tracts might be sent to some individual or individuals
in each locality who would promise to distribute them faith-
fully and intelligently where they would do the most good.
Perhaps the editor of The Arena would open up a portion
of his superb magazine for the publication of news items,
from all sections, describing the development of this awaken-
ing, and thus from month to month keep the country aroused
by brief, stirring articles from many pens, contributing inspir-
ing information from the constantly increasing centres of
organization.
I would suggest, in addition, that preliminary meetings be
called in each locality about a month before the great rally-
ing night, to temporarily organize and to prepare a programme
for the occasion. When good speakers are at hand or capa-
ble essays can be prepared and read, by all means let such
local talent be utilized. But wherever such talent is wanting,
let the tracts be read, let the constitution or bond of union,
which will doubtless soon be published, be produced and
signatures thereto procured ; let some of the noble articles
which have appeared in The Arena ever since its birth
be read, or let any other available programme be pursued.
These are, of course, only crude suggestions, and will
doubtless be improved and enlarged by others before the
time of meeting. I would also suggest that some metropol-
itan centre — New York, Boston, Chicago, or elsewhere — be
selected as the place for the central or national meeting, and
that at such meeting telegrams be received and read from all
rallying centres indicating the progress and prospect of the
undertaking.
It is customary, during the first week of the year, to con-
duct in the churches what is known as the week of prayer.
I therefore propose that, wherever it is practicable, the week
of prayer be utilized for nightly meetings by the new organi-
zation, setting forth at each gathering the necessity, origin,
purpose, and prospect of the new movement. Doubtless in
such assemblies, perfect freedom being given to the spirit
of speech and exhortation, a Quaker surprise will be a fre-
quent occurrence, and many a speaker " moved by the spirit "
will suddenly burst upon the astonished audience, himself the
most surprised of all in the accidental discovery of his own
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HOW TO BALLY THE HOSTS OF FBEEDOM. 363
unconscious powers. The kingdom of the new life is at
hand. " Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings " the
gospel of truth, light, and love shall yet be proclaimed.
I have also a suggestion to offer concerning a name to be
given to the proposed organization. I have cudgelled my
brain over this problem for about five years. It is very diffi-
cult to create a satisfactory and inspiring name for such a
great movement. The names already suggested — " Order of
Servants of Humanity," " League of Love," and " Federation
of Justice" — are favorable in several aspects; but none of
them seems to me to possess that ringing and inspiring
sound which I believe to be at least partially essential to
success. Remember the proposed society is to be one for
the masses — not for the dilettanti. Therefore it must be
something which will catch the popular ear and awaken both
curiosity and interest. I had thought of " League of Lib-
erty " ; then when I saw Mr. Flower's suggestion, " League
of Love," the union of the two phrases, " League of Liberty
and Love," occurred to me as alliterative and suggestive.
Yet even that did not fully satisfy me. Then I reasoned,
this association will consist of mutual helpers, co-laborers,
a community of people bent upon mutual service — fellow-
servants. Hence I thought it might be called the " Federa-
tion of Fellow-Servants "; or, to please some who would like
the suggestion of freedom in the title, it might be called the
"Federation of Free Fellow-servants." Popularly
the order might become known as the "F.F.F.S." — possibly
the " 3 F. S." Individually the members would be denomi-
nated " Fellow-Servants," a term which seems to me singu-
larly to express the very purpose and inspiration of the
proposed order.
I am, of course, aware that there is a legal technical inter-
pretation attributed to the term " Fellow-Servants," but the
technical meaning need in no manner confuse the popular
conception and application of the same, as the analogy of our
language felicitously admits of this. Personally, it seems
to me I should be proud to call myself a " Fellow-Servant,"
when I indicated by that appellation that I was a member of
that great aggregation of individuals and forces which I
believe will yet constitute the federation of free fellow-ser-
vants, by whatever name the association may become known,
to the world*
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364 THE ARENA.
My paper is already too long, or I would suggest much
more concerning several minor features and purposes of the
organization. I think a mutual benefit feature, constructed
upon some safe and business-like basis, would be a very
efficacious and encouraging factor in such an order. I would
also propose that the national societies be organized on the
basis of political boundaries and localities. The capital of
each state should be the headquarters of the organizations in
that commonwealth, as each county seat, or principal city in
each county, should be constituted the county headquarters.
If possible, the president, leader, or lecturer of the society at
the state capital should have advisory supervision over the
entire state, as the leader of the county seat society should
exercise similar functions over the local village societies.
Of course by supervision is not intended the exercise of any
authority, but simply assistance of such a nature as may be
called for by each society. Each branch must in itself be
a perfect autonomy, yet so related to all the others that co-
operation and mutuality of interests shall ever prevail.
Once a quarter it would be well to hold union meetings at
the county seat, or the principal city in the county, which
representatives from all the county societies should attend.
Every six months, or possibly every year, a general state
meeting should be held at the capital, where representatives
from the entire commonwealth should be sent, to be employed
in whatever capacity they might avail. Then as a climax,
annually, a great national assembly in some metropolitan
centre should be held, on which occasion the most noble and
inspiring efforts should be put forth to arouse the whole
country to the grandeur of our cause and the triumph and
purpose of our endeavor.
I have also long seriously thought upon the proclamation
of principles for the proposed federation, and I will close this
article with the following declarations, which may be helpful
in the final formula to be presented: —
1. It shall be the object of the members of this organization to
seek the solution of all issues and problems, religious, scientific,
sociological, psychological, and practical.
2. To accept as fundamental such apparent expositions of the
truth as accord with thorough research, with unbiased reason, and
with honest purpose.
3. To spread the literature of all reasonable phases of propaganda
which seem to promise disenthralment from superstition and tradi-
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HOW TO BALLY THE HOSTS OF FREEDOM* 865
tional ignorance, and to cultivate in the human mind an attitude
receptive to the demonstration of truth, however repugnant to con-
ventional conviction or respectable adherence.
4. To advocate a just basis for the rightful fraternization of
humanity, wherein justice shall be the foundation of all functional '
relations; wherein effective labor shall never be defrauded of its own
created wealth; wherein, while the social organization shall be a
compact unity, the individual shall be so related to the whole as to
be privileged with perfect freedom, so far forth as this shall not
encroach upon the rightful freedom of another.
5. To ascertain, by scientific methods, the actual existence of a
presumed latent potency in the human mind, known as the psychic,
and if discovered, to explore all its possibilities and promises to their
utmost limit.
6. To search and expound such ethics as are founded in scientific
exposition, appeal to the loftiest ideal, and promise to further the
ultimate happiness of the individual, blended in the universal harmony
of the social organism.
7. To cultivate among ourselves the social instinct for higher
mutual improvement, inviting to our ranks, regardless of "race,
color, or previous condition," of social position or financial qualifica-
tion, all who may desire to affiliate peaceably with us, seeking by all
justifiable and rational efforts to rescue the outcast from oblivion
and shame, to upbuild the moral character by transformed physical
environments and social relations; remembering, however, that the
rich are not to be scorned for their wealth, or the poor for their
poverty, but all are to be alike welcomed as true fellow-servants who
are willing to consecrate their services to the amelioration of their
fellowkina.
On some such rational and ethical basis I look for the
formation of that glorious brotherhood of humanity which
shall usher in the new age, vocal with the songs of human
happiness, and prophetic of that glad day when man's inhu-
manity to man shall be no more, when contention shall be
swallowed up in peace, when selfishness shall be transmuted
into love, and when truth shall be the universal saviour,
with healing in her wings, whom, with wide open eyes, man-
kind shall evermore adore !
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THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CASE.
Verdict No. II.
[This month we publish the second instalment of the Bacon-
Shakespeare verdict, containing opinions of Edmund C. Stedman,
Edmund Gosse, Professor A. E. Dolbear of Tufts College, Luther
R. Marsh, Esq., Hon. A. A. Adee, and Professor N. S. Shaler of
Harvard University. It will be seen that Professor Dolbear
renders a verdict against Shakespeare, but does not commit him-
self in favor of Bacon; while Edmund C. Stedman, Edmund
Gosse, Luther R. Marsh, A. A. Adee, and Professor Shaler ren-
der verdicts for the defendant.]
I. EDMUND CLABENCE STEDMAN.
I have examined all the arguments of the opposing counsel.
Doubtless Mr. Reed's opening brief embodies the points which
he deems most telling for the plaintiff. Let me own that, after
following him through four numbers of The Abena, it was a
shock to find him, in the fifth, submitting a cogent brief for the
other side. This gave an air of insincerity to his efforts, and
weakened the results of his original attack. In spite of Professor
Schelling's opinion that his counter-brief strengthens the plain-
tiff's case by a halting understatement of Shakespeare's, I really
think his second opening a pretty effective rejoinder to the first ;
for he does exhibit the main, simple, obvious, irrefutable points in
favor of the defendant — the facts that of themselves make so
strong a case as to plead " trumpet-tongued against the deep
damnation of his taking-off."
What do we find in Mr. Reed's brief for the plaintiff? He in-
sists, first, upon the scholarship, wisdom, and genius of the
author of the plays ; second, upon the ignorance and stolidity of
Shakespeare, who, as he furthermore avers, made no claim to the
authorship ; third, upon the learning and greatness of Bacon,
and the internal evidence that such a man as he must have been
the author. For the rest, Mr. Reed alludes to Bacon's " Promus,"
and magnifies all the trifling straws of coincidence, surmise,
analogy, etc., at which the Baconians have caught throughout
the forty years of this discussion.
In his counter-brief he acknowledges the contemporaneous
368
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ten bAcon-shakesmabu case. 367
testimony " without a flaw," of Heminge, Condell, and Ben Jon-
son. He lays stress upon the unique character of the works in
question — upon their quality so distinctive as to render it impos-
sible that the author of Bacon's acknowledged verses could have
written them. These two points are enough. They would be
selected by such an advocate as Webster, who had a contempt for
side issues, and put his force upon the direct line of argument.
As to the mistakes of the dramatist, it is at least paradoxical,
first, to attribute the plays to Bacon because of their and his
learning, and, second, to attribute them to him because of their
ignorance — alleging that blunders had to be made for the better
concealment of his authorship. The truth is that the dramatist's
errors in language, history, geography, and so on are precisely
those which a lifelong scholar could not force himself to make, —
any more than a Saint Chrysostom by any effort could bring him-
self to utter an obscene profanity, — his whole nature and hath
being otherwise ; but a genius like Shakespeare's never would
permit a mere fact to disconcert the action, passion, imagination,
of creative art. Scores of readers in his time, though not univer-
sity scholars, were familiar with poorly translated classics, and
with chronicles and romances without number. Besides, every
man of talent knows how slight a clew is sufficient for the imagi-
nation ; it can conceive of the whole tropics from seeing a frond
of palm. While the classicism of certain plays is just that which
a layman would have found in his general reading and from the
special reading of a faulty Plutarch, their anachronism and bad
history are Shakespeare's own. For the rest, he made his world,
not found it.
Dr. Nicholson, although a clergyman, reveals a lawyer's ability
to analyze evidence, in his reply seriatim to the matters put
forward by Mr. Reed. His acumen and his knowledge of the
Elizabethan time are of much service to the defendant.
From Professor Rolf e we have a cogent statement of the points
most essential, written in the clear and manly English to which
he has accustomed his readers. Brushing away all cobwebs, he
shows that the " fundamental assumption " of the Baconians is
that Shakespeare could not have written the works ascribed to
him, and that only Bacon was equal to their production. Mr.
Rolfe's distinction between the respective equipments of the
philosophic scholar and the imaginative poet has an effective
bearing on the case. Of itself it almost rules the plaintiff out of
court.
Dr. Furnivall argues with the impatience and dogmatism so
entertaining to a tranquil mind. The occasion, it must be con-
fessed, gives this expert an unusual excuse for a display of tem-
perament in his forcible conclusions. But why does he award just
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368 THE AJRENA.
praise to a few of our critical editors, by way of intensifying his
poor opinion of Americans at large? They know quite as much
of English literature, and of their Shakespeare as do the common
people of the motherland. Some of them even know of Dr.
Furnivall.
Mr. Donnelly censures his associate, Mr. Reed, for betraying
their client — and well he may. Professor Schelling, as I have
said, repudiates Mr. Reed's aid to the defence ; nevertheless, let
us be grateful for it. " It is the cause, it is the cause," that
makes that counter-brief so strong. Mr. Donnelly puts forward
a rejoinder to the arguments of his predecessors, but his heart is
really in the business when he comes to the great Cryptogram.
He long ago convinced us that if Bacon did not fit the plays to
the cipher, it was because our ingenious fellow-citizen was pre-
destined to fit a cipher to the plays.
Various matters which impress Mr. Donnelly and his asso-
ciates seem very trivial. An argument is fallacious that is
derived from trifling verbal resemblances, from proverbs common
to many periods and literatures, from mystic meanings read into
expressions common to many Elizabethan poets. Whatever
essential likeness there is in the thought and speech of the two
great compeers springs from those high moods wherein, as Words-
worth declares, " The true poet and the true philosopher are one."
A word more : If the plays were held " in general contempt " for
more than one hundred years, is it surprising that Shakespeare's
generation did not realize their full value? Nevertheless, he won
a stately reputation in his lifetime. It is incomprehensible that
even a partisan can find any touch of irony in the enduring testi-
mony of Ben Jonson's prelude, " To the memory of my beloved
Mr. William Shakespeare, and what he hath left us."
From Mr. Reed we have supplementary tractates in reply to
the briefs of Messrs. Nicholson, Rolfe, and Furnivall, and a
" closing argument " for the plaintiff. But these do not change
my opinion, and I suppose they are not fairly " of record " in the
case. Finally, "one of your best papers is Professor Schelling's
compact summing-up for the defendant. His peroration is a
model of the teductio ad absurd urn, and his conclusion is that it
is impossible that Bacon should have done " what is distinctly at
variance with his characteristics of mind and training." I am
heartily of the same belief. The instinct of a scholar is against
the Baconian theory ; so is the instinct of every one who is even
" a bit of a poet." And what is this instinct, but the ultimate
wisdom, the spiritual sense derived from long acquaintanceship
and practice? The trained eye of the physician serves him
better than all the equipment of a studious neophyte. Whatever
the decision of your jury may be, I would that it could put a
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THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CASE. * 369
final stop to this discussion. Doubtless even the rotundity of
the earth will always have a sceptic to dispute it.
" But it is no matter;
Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew, and dog will have his day."
Edmund C. Stedman.
Mr. Stedman renders his verdict for Shakespeare.
n. EDMUND GOSSE.
In a letter which "I received from you last autumn, you
requested me to read with attention, and finally to give my
impression of, a controversy on the authorship of Shakespeare's
works, then about to begin in The Arena. The discussion has
closed, and you remind me that I have promised to report upon
it. I do so with pleasure, because I think the contention must be
a final one this time ; I hardly suppose the question can need to
be reopened. The Baconian hypothesis can never be stated with
more courtesy and candor, with keener ingenuity, or with fuller
investigation, than has in this instance been done. Now, there-
fore, or never the Baconians should have persuaded the world.
Reading what they have to bring forward, with the greatest
appreciation of their sincerity and acumen and an unprejudiced
consideration of all their points, I am finally brought to this
position : That to doubt that what are called the Works of
Shakespeare were, in the main, written by William Shakespeare
of Stratford-on-Avon, and that they were not in any degree
written by Sir Francis Bacon, is possible only if we neglect
probability, the analogies of literary history, all internal evidence,
and all external tradition. Edmund Gosse.
Edmund Gosse. Verdict is for the defendant.
HI. PROFESSOR A. E. DOLBEAR.
Mr. Reed has presented what purports to be a complete
account of all that is really known concerning the life of William
Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon. It is meagre and uninterest-
ing, concerned with trivial things, that no one interested in a
literary career can care the least for, even though associated with
the life of the real author of the works called Shakespeare's. He
presents evidence that the Stratford family was illiterate, law-
less, and dirty, and gives facsimiles of the known autographs of
the now famous man. These show, as plainly as need be, that
the hand which wrote those had no facility with a pen, and make
it certain that it was not the hand alluded to by the editor in
1623 when he said, "His mind and hand went together," etc.
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370 • THE ARENA.
Until lately, the commentators have found in the " Works w
evidence of great and varied accomplishments; knowledge of
ancient and modern languages, of history, of law, of science, and
philosophy. Attainments in these fields imply much more than
genius : they imply improved opportunities. Genius can dispense
with learning in music, in mathematics, in mechanism ; but there
is no such thing as innate knowledge of language or law or
history or science. It is a necessary presumption that whoever
possesses any of them in any degree has acquired so much, and
eminence implies great and persistent efforts. According to Mr.
Reed, there is no evidence that Shakespeare had either oppor-
tunity or inclination to concern himself with any such matters.
On the contrary, his known tastes were a long remove from
them. Fancy, if one can, Bacon retiring from London as a
money lender and beer brewer !
The 80-»called defendants do not attempt to add any matter
from the known life of Shakespeare to what Mr. Reed has given.
Dr. Rolf e says the autographs are gross caricatures ; but he does
not give the truthful ones, as he should have done if he could,
and Mr. Reed reaffirms their fidelity. Dr. Rolfe says, " It is
amazing that any Shakespearean scholar should have ever con-
ceived that there is evidence of learning in the plays." Never-
theless he is well aware that the most eminent of them have
found abundance of it there. If it be not there, it shows that
the judgment of Shakespearean scholars is not to be trusted when
inferences are to be drawn. It was found there, until it became
apparent it damaged Shakespeare's claim. To deny it now looks
like hedging to save a reputation for perspicacity. Moses was
deemed the author of the Pentateuch, until students of other
matters began to look up the evidence, and they soon changed all
that, in spite of the contemptuous treatment by the old defenders.
As the defence seems to acquiesce in the statements of the
plaintiff concerning what is really known of William Shakespeare,
and draws its inferences from a hypothetical Shakespeare rather
than the one we know something about, it appears, from the
evidence presented, highly improbable that William Shake-
speare either did or could have written what has been attributed
to him. That Bacon wrote it, does not seem to me to be so
certain as the other ; though the letter of Matthew to Bacon con-
cerning a wonderful man, is much stronger than the somewhat
equivocal one of Ben Jonson concerning Shakespeare, while the
contents of the " Promus " of Bacon scattered through the plays
seems inexplicable on any other assumption than that he was
himself the author. A. E. Dolbear.
Professor Polbear believes defendant did not write the plays.
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THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CASE. 371
IV. LUTHER B. MAB8H, ESQ.
I have carefully read the arguments on both sides, as they
have been printed in The Arena ; considered them, and written
an opinion thereon, at full length, which, being too voluminous
for publication in that magazine, according to its programme, I
herewith condense it into this synopsis. Being requested to be as
u brief and concise as possible," I am obliged, herein, to leave
many minor points untouched, and merely to glance at the salient
ones.
1. The onus probandi is on the plaintiff. He must show not
v only that the defendant did not, but that the plaintiff did, write
the disputed works.
2. Shakespeare's possession of the title and credit of author-
ship, in his lifetime and ever since, raises a presumption in his
favor, which must be overcome by satisfactory proof to entitle
the plaintiff to a verdict.
3. The jcase is one which must necessarily be decided on
circumstantial evidence and historical reference and innate con-
siderations, ail direct proof being out of the question.
4. The absence of any testimony, on plaintiff's behalf, that he,
during his life, ever put forth any claim to the authorship of
either the dramas or the sonnets, is a potent argument against
his contention.
5. The absence of any such assertion of right is not ade-
quately accounted for or explained. No sufficient reason for such
extraordinary reticence has been offered or suggested. The
theory that the plaintiff concealed his authorship from the fear
that the knowledge of it would induce the disfavor of the queen
and her court, and retard his advance, is not sustained. On the
contrary, the fact th^t Shakespeare was invited to read before
Elizabeth some of his plays, at Shrove-tide and Yule-tide, proves
that there was no hostility on her part towards these writings ;
and Ben Jonson refers to this as evidence of the high favor
with which they were received.
6. The allegation that Shakespeare had not the education
requisite for the production of such works, fails; for if, as
claimed under another point, so little — almost nothing — is
known of Shakespeare in his youth, it cannot be known that he
did not have ail the advantages which the most advanced schools
of the time afforded. Certainly there was a well-known grammar
school, of repute, at Stratford ; and the study of languages was
in high favor at that period. Again, I regard these works as the
product of inspiration, rather than of plodding and profound
study and research. That argument would unseat Burns as the
author of bw poems, and Patrick Henry as the greatest orator of
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372 THE ABENA.
his age. Besides, it is known that Shakespeare often built up
his plays on the framework of some antecedent dramas — turning
their dross into gold ; and it is not unlikely that some of the
authors, of those were men of classic lore, and left the evidences
thereof for Shakespeare to adopt.
7. The argument that Bacon's home — St. Albans — is often
named, and Shakespeare's — Stratford-on-Avon — never, does not
seem very strong when we remember that St. Albans was re-
nowned for its historical associations, and Stratford was com-
paratively unknown.
8. It is fair to presume that Bacon would have carried his
well-known habits of his prose compositions into his poetical
writings. Naturally we would expect that much more labor and
time would be required in the conception, recording, and polish-
ing of his poems, than of his prose. Now, as it is granted that
he was the most painstaking of authors, — rewriting his great
work, "Novum Organum," twelve times, and his Essays thirty
times, — it would seem that a similar labor bestowed on the plays
and sonnets, in addition, would be almost impossible.
9. When we consider the full life of Bacon, crowded ever;
his profound studies and preparation for his active life ; his pro-
fessional engagements; his official duties; his efforts for advance-
ment; his social life; his literary and other engagements; his
garden relaxations ; — it does not appear to be within the limits
of physical possibility that he could have found the time or
endured the labor necessary for these compositions, in addition to
his acknowledged labors and productions.
10. It seems inconsistent with what we know of. human nature
in general, and of Bacon's nature in particular, tnat he should or
could have kept the secret of his authorship so closely, through
all the emergencies and temptations of his eventful life ; resist-
ing all inducements, though so inviting; through health and
sickness, through poverty and prosperity, through freedom and
imprisonment; through the time of his condemnation and sen-
tence, and after ; and died, with the riddle unrevealed, leaving no
trace or hint by which his authorship might even be suspected.
What motive could have induced him to bestow such time and
labor as were required for these productions, if he was not to be
known as the author? One would think that, if Bacon wrote
the plays which were gaining for Shakespeare such financial
reward and enviable renown, he would, certainly after the sen-
tence for bribery was pronounced, which barred all his future,
have sought at least to mitigate the terrible blow, by announcing
that he, Bacon, was indeed the man whom his country and the
world should honor, as the author of the works in question.
11. The well-earned praise which, the plaintiff's argument
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THE BACOff-SH A KESPEARE CASE, 373
shows, has been accorded by many eminent writers to the genius
of Bacon could have found no language to sound his eulogy if,
in addition, like a new
" morn
Risen on mid-noon,"
these writers had attempted to record their enthusiasm. It would
have been too great for mortal.
12. The whole range and scope of the studies, duties, employ-
ments, and life-work of Bacon were not congenial with, nor stimu-
lative of, that imaginative condition essential to the conception
and composition of these inspired productions.
13. The testimony of contemporaries, or of those living soon
after Shakespeare, is of controlling import.
Of Ben Jonson^ his friend and oft companion, who, while he
gave Bacon high praise, could not rise to the height of his eulogy
of Shakespeare.
Of Milton (born eight years before Shakespeare's death), who
gives him the firstfruits of his poetic genius, and who said to
Hampden : —
44 The brain that originated the ( Tempest' and conceived the wonder-
ful tragedy of 4 Hamlet ' is, to my thinking, the greatest in our English
letters. Others are tall; Shakespeare is a giant. I could be content to
have reached grey hairs, could I have seen and talked with him."
This almost contemporaneous tribute by the next sublimest
genius of English poesy, to the greatest, is, to me, a testimony
that overrides many criticisms of an after age.
Of James and Richard Burbage, and of Heminge and Condell,
— intimates and fellow-actors with Shakespeare, remembered
in his will, — who certainly must have known whether Shake-
speare, in whose plays they acted, was the author of the dramas
ascribed to him.
Of Betterton, the actor, who came into this world only nineteen
years after Shakespeare left it, and who visited Stratford to
seek out all that could be known of the traditions and history
of Shakespeare; and who could hardly be deceived as to his
authorship.
14. Some reliance should be placed upon the host of learned
commentators of the plays of Shakespeare, down to old Sam
Johnson, and on the many eminent later writers, as Carlyle,
Emerson, Lowell, Gilfillan, Macaulay, Irving, Landon, and others,
who must be assumed to be well acquainted with the writings of
both Shakespeare and Bacon, and with the style and mental
characteristics of each, and who have never entertained a doubt
concerning the authorship of Shakespeare. Our own Emerson,
for instance, — poet, philosopher, and seer, — says that /Shake-
speare " not only reached the common measure of great men, as
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874 THE ARENA.
Bacon, Milton, Tasso, Cervantes," but that he was " the man of
men," and "planted the standard of humanity some furlongs
further into chaos."
15. The number of books, essays, pamphlets, called forth by
these works under Shakespeare's name, has been estimated at ten
thousand; and the universal accord is to Shakespeare as the author.
16. This general consensus of his authorship is proved by the
sacred reverence for every relic of Shakespeare preserved in his
native town, and the beaten path of the world's pilgrims to the
shrine of his genius. Can such a universal instinct and sentiment
be mistaken?
17. Nature, who writes her testimony in the features, has
inscribed unmistakable attributes on the countenances of these
two exceptional men ; and every observer instinctively turns to
Shakespeare as the poet of lofty thought, and to Bacon as the
rugged and profound deiver and philosopher.
18. The character of the two modes of thought of Bacon and
Shakespeare is, to my mind, so entirely variant that it does not
seem probable — hardly possible — that their various works
could have proceeded from one and the same mind.
19. Bacon's essays are overladen with his learning ; quotations
and foreign epigrams and illustrations abound ; whereas Shake-
speare rarely imports into his writings — except where the char-
acters he is representing require it — any Latin, French, or other
foreign expressions.
20. The styles of composition — and style is as distinctive as
handwriting — are thoroughly different. There is no similarity
between the style of the essays and that of the dramas.
21. Shakespeare and Bacon were antipodes in all things — in
person, countenance, heart, and mind.
22. To combine the high qualities and works of these two
authors in one man would represent a being greater than any
mortal yet known on the earth.
23. In conclusion of the whole matter, I am compelled to say
that I believe in the man William Shakespeare ; in his person-
ality ; in his character ; his genius ; his inspiration ; his capacity ;
his authorship ; and that he wrote the plays and sonnets which, in
his lifetime and ever since, have passed under his name. I have
not a doubt. There is nothing in the arguments for the plaintiff
that causes me to waver a hair in this conviction. In this con-
clusion, I take nothing from the just fame of Lord Bacon. He
is a luminous point in the history of the race. He is a star of the
first magnitude. But higher than he, and brighter than he,
flames forth the sun of Shakespeare.
The complaint should be dismissed. Luther R. Marsh.
Mr. Marsh renders a verdict for the defendant.
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THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CASE. 875
V. HON. A. A. ADEE.
The issue is squarely joined. It is incumbent on the advo-
cates of Bacon's authorship to prove their claim, and coinci-
dently to disprove the reputed Shakespearean origin of the plays.
The burden of proof is not to be shifted by plausible pleading or
brilliant but delusive rhetoric. The defendant's advocates make
a mistake in not massing the proofs on which Shakespeare's title
has rested undisturbed for nearly three hundred years. They
appear to assume that the vital facts are known to the jury.
This may be so of those who have given years to the study, not
alone of the reputed canon, but of the whole field of the literature
and stage of his time.
Of external evidence that Bacon wrote these or any plays,
there is no trace. His marvellous intellect left a matchless heri-
tage to posterity, indeed, but, like his career, all lying in a deter-
minate plane, not at all suggestive of piaywriting.
The cdnjectural evidence is slender. I read the oft-cited
phrases in the light of context and known facts. In the allusion
to a concealed poets " I see Bacon's genial bracketing of himself
and Sir John Davies as an unnoted versifier ; else, why the
plural ? Davies' " Epigrammes r survive in humble association
with Marlowe's. The most obtruded point is the Tobie Matthew
letter — so conclusive, in Mr. Reed's mind, that " Indeed, on this
ground alone we might ask, if it were legally permissible, that
the court instruct the jury to find for the plaintiff." Bacon's
44 great and noble token and favor of the ninth of April " is, rea-
sonably, his lost letter of that date to Matthew, probably as lauda-
tory as those prior to Tobie's departure about April 1, 1623, to
join Prince Charles at Madrid. Perhaps it enclosed his gracious
letter of March 31, introducing Tobie to Sir Francis Cottington,
then in Madrid under an assumed name. The " prodigious wit "
of his lordship's 44 name, though he be known by another," must,
by the stated terms, have been an Englishman ( 44 of my na-
tion " ), who was at that time on the Continent ( 44 of this side of
the sea " ) — which last Bacon was not
Of finding parallels there is no end. In an idle evening I my-
self once collected threescore, as startling as any in the "Promus,"
by collating the plays and Thomas a Kempis' 44 Imitation."
Of the internal evidence of the plays, I may be allowed to
speak somewhat at length. In them I discern a steady change of
style, from the 'prentice-work, imitative of Marlowe's mighty
line and of the easy jingle of Peele, to the ripe mastery of
44 Winter's Tale." They grow, by consistent gradation, in power
and withal in complexity of diction. Between 44 The Two Gen-
tlemen of Verona " and 44 The Tempest," the contrast is as visible
as between Murillo's early and vaporoso styles. Bacon's work,
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376 THE ARENA.
on the contrary, runs at a constant level, from the Essays to the
" History of the Tudors."
The plays are not closet-born ; they are of the stage, stagey —
not in spots, but throughout. They reek with scenic allusions —
the "blanket" of the dark, the gaping "hell," the "heavens"
hung with black. Metaphors drawn from the actor's sordid life
abound. Their aim is effectiveness in representation. They are
as manifestly the job-work of the professional playwright as is the
output of Lilly, Greene, Chapman, or Dekker, but they differ in
degree. The self-same clay is fashioned unto greater honor,
with a facility that argues that most marvellous of all powers —
unconscious and effortless excellence. Had their maker known
how well he wrought, he could not have wrought half so well.
It is thus that Ben Jonson complained that his friend Shake-
speare wrote, wanting " art."
The fact of collaboration and adaptation is one of the most
salient in the genesis of the plays. Take, among early instances,
the "Contention" and "True Tragedie." Whatever be the
truth of Shakespeare's copartnership in the originals, — and I
share Grant White's belief in his participation, — is it not signifi-
cant that, when Marlowe's and Greene's work for the Pembroke
Company was recast to make a play for Burbage's theatre, the
Greene passages should be wholly rewritten and transmuted,
while the Marlowe parts (embracing what may be Shakespeare's
early effort) are transferred with little or no change ? And to
leap to the latest example, why should Fletcher have contributed
a large share of " Henry VIII.," except by way of collaboration
or to finish a drama sketched out and left half-done by the first
author ?
I cannot disregard the mass of external evidence which identi-
fies Shakespeare with the theatre from 1588, as actor, shareholder,
manager, and playwright. His upward progress was rapid, until
we find him high in the chamberlain's troop, and chief stock-
holder in the Globe and Blackf riars, while many contemporary
notices attribute to him plays belonging exclusively to those
theatres. I fail to see in the testimony of Ben Jonson traces of
" double meaning " and " exquisite satire." Even in criticising he
grants Shakespeare's paternity of " Winter's Tale " and "Julius
Caesar "; and to the intellectual fecundity of the man he loved on
this side idolatry, he bears unimpeachable witness years after
Shakespeare, and Bacon too, had passed away. The evidence of
Heminge and Condell, his fellow-actors, fellow-stockholders, and
publishers of the plays of which they owned the copyright, is not
to be lightly esteemed.
It has become a fashion to point to the five existing auto-
graphs of Shakespeare as proof of his illiteracy. Two of these
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mE BAC0tf-SHA£E8£EABE CASE. 377
were penned in 1613, two years after he had quitted the theatre
forever ; the last three, on the will, are the work of a dying man.
Is it not at least as plausible to find in these signatures suggestion
of the degeneracy of pen-palsy, as to deem them the imitative
scrawling of a boor ? And in this conjecture may not an expla-
nation be found of the abrupt cessation of playwriting activity
in 1610 or 1611, leaving "Henry VIII." to be finished three
years later by another hand, at a time when Bacon was in the
zenith of his powers and devoting the ample leisure of his
waning fortunes to the completion of his life tasks ?
I need not Bacon's erudition to account for the versatile infor-
mation of the plays. This theatre-hack, Shakespeare, was the
daily associate of Jonson, Chapman, Marlowe, Greene, Nash,
Peele, Lodge, Chettle, Armin, and many more of Bohemian
aptitude and of facile fancy. That he was intimate with John
Florio, private tutor in Southampton's family, is hardly to be
doubted ; and to this source some of the obscurely derived
Italian plots may have been due. Even in anachronisms he fol-
lowed Chapman, whose conversance with things Homeric did
not prevent his introducing pistols, tobacco, and billiards in a
play of Ptolemy's time. Bacon could certainly never have writ-
ten such mongrel French as in " Henry V.," which was probably
Lodge's contribution. Holinshed and North's Plutarch, almost
servilely paraphrased, supply the ancient and modern history of
the plays, and especially the Roman and dynastic law, which has
been held up as beyond Shakespeare's reach.
His grammar-school education, with some Latin and some
Greek, bars the plea of illiteracy at the outset, as completely as
the testimony of the tablet beneath his bust in old Trinity at
Stratford, set up before 1623, does at the close of his career of
admitted renown. What of Milton's tribute to Shakespeare's
easy flowing numbers and heritage of fancy ? I cannot accept
Mr. Reed's dictum that such references to Shakespeare as a
reputed author "are irrelevant to our purpose." They are, to
me, of the very essence of it ; and until I can honestly form a
belief that Jonson, Milton, Meres, Digges, Heminge, and Condell
were coparceners in covering up an open fraud with a tissue
of sarcastic laudation, I must give my verdict for William
Shakespeare. Alvey A. Adee.
Alvey A. Adee renders a verdict in favor of defendant.
VI. PROFESSOR N. S. SHALER.
I have patiently, though at times with some exasperation, read
the interesting discussion concerning the authorship of the plays
accredited to William Shakespeare, which has appeared in The
Arena. As I have a great respect for several of the writers who
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878 THE AKKNA.
have contended for the view that Francis Bacon wrote those
plays, I think I have been able to consider the argument in a
judicial manner. I am aware, however, that it is not easy for me
to clear my mind of prejudices.
Looking at the matter as a juryman, but retaining the right to
go beyond the limits of the facts and arguments which you have
presented, I am clearly of the opinion that those who have advo-
cated- the claims they make that Lord Bacon wrote the plays
commonly attributed to Shakespeare, have failed to make out
their case. The points which weigh most with me, a few of the
many which have weight, are as follows : —
First, in the time and place when these plays were written,
although gospel and scandal abounded, no one suspected any
relationship between Bacon and Shakespeare. It seems to me
very improbable that the keen-witted men of that time should
have failed to discern this if it had existed.
Next, I note that many of Shakespeare's plays were made over
from such material as he would have found about a theatre.
They bear the stamp of immediate professional skill such as only
the man educated on the stage would possess. Bacon was not
only an original but originating mind. So far as I can find, he
built his works always on his own foundation. He is, indeed, one
of the most distinctly individualized men in literature. If he
had undertaken to write a series of dramas, it seems to me that
he would not have refurbished the work of others, but would
have trusted to himself.
The literary style of Bacon's work appears to me entirely dif-
ferent from that of Shakespeare. Both in his prose and in the
fragments of verse which we have from his pen, there is a note,
which, as I apprehend it, differs in a most significant way from
that of all true poets. I do not deny him wit or imagination —
he had both in large measure ; but his instinct of presentation
appears to me not to be at all poetical.
Such identities as are traceable in the writings of these men,
although they are both numerous and striking, seem to me to be
accounted for by the fact that they dwelt together in a little city,
in what was then a small state, where every man appears to have
known much about his neighbors and where phrases were bandied
about. Although we cannot trace any social intercourse be-
tween Shakespeare and Bacon, it seems to me very probable that
they were often together. Even the strong caste feeling which
excluded actors from society at that time, is not likely to have
kept two able and active men apart.
Yours very truly,
N. S. Shaler.
Professor Shaler renders a verdict in favor of defendant.
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HOSANNA OF KA-BOB: A STUDY IN RELIGIOUS
HYPNOTISM.
BY FORREST CRISSEY.
The directors of the Ka-Bob district school evidently intended
to do things about u on the square." The briar-fringed lot, open
toward the road, in the precise centre of which stood the little
rectangular frame schoolhouse, was as square cornered as the
building itself. Even the whitewashed board above the door,
which proclaimed, in letters of lamp-black, the legend, " Ka-
Bob, District No. 6," had the same well-regulated abruptness of
feature.
Suddenly this sepulchral structure emptied forth a stream of
pushing, crowding, laughing, storming boys and girls, — as noisy
and merry as the brook which tumbled under the stump fence at
the rear of the school ground, and rattled over its stony way
until it came to a system of miniature fish dams which separated
each boy's minnow pond from those of his mates.
Here the boisterous little brook was suddenly hushed, and
compelled to steal through aqueducts of hollow smellage stalks,
and between mason work of loose stones, in order to escape to
the meadow, — beyond the road, — where it flowed on as quietly
and as gracefully as moved the solitary girl, who passed out of
the schoolhouse a little behind her younger and noisier mates.
The schoolmaster was the last of all to appear in the doorway.
He still held a spelling-book in his hand, his index finger shut in
between the pages from which he had been propounding words
to a row of restless little " Bobbers."
Unlike every other young man in the community whose cheeks
gave a "faint, uncertain prophecy of beard," Nathan Oakley's
face was fair and closely shaven.
His countenance was fine and thoughtful, at the same time
expressing large resource and strong determination. His calm
blue eyes rested a moment on the retreating figure of his eldest
pupil, as she stooped by the roadside to pull a lingering spear of
Delated timothy; but he quickly raised them, not even waiting
to see the pearly teeth nip the tender end of the segment, and
his gaze rested dreamily on the long stretch of Ka-Bob flats.
Although he did not appear to notice the man who, with a
quick, downward jerk of the head intended for a civil recogni-
379
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380 fHti ARENA.
tion, passed Phebe Snow upon the bridge, his observation of
both man and girl had been searching. He noticed that beneath
the seeming indifference and preoccupation of the man's manner
and salutation, there was a kind of note- taking which struck him
as unpleasant and almost repulsive. The man approached the
young schoolmaster with that peculiar forward lope which indi-
cates an intense temperament, subject to strong enthusiasms.
The happy reflection of a smile, which seemed always ready to
dance across his tense, nervous lips, reminded Nathan of the
flickerings of sunshine on the schoolhouse ceiling, which appeared
when the sun shone into a certain window, where its rays could
be caught on the freshly bathed surface of a slate, and made to
dance about the room at the will of the urchin who held the
slate.
" Brother Nathan, how air ye ; and how does the blessed work
come on ? " said the 'squire, who not only held the young man's
hand, but grasped his muscular arm to emphasize die cordiality
of the greeting.
" Why, very well, I guess, if you refer to the school," replied
the teacher.
" i^-zactiy ! Glad t' hear it. Heard about the meetings ? "
" No," replied Nathan ; « what about them? "
" Well, ef that don't beat the Shakers ! — livin' right here on
Ka-Bob flats, and don't know 'bout the meetin's !
" Now see here, Brother Nathan," continued the 'squire, laugh-
ingly, " don't you let nobody round this 'ere circuit know that
you don't know 'bout the meetin's, or they'll think you ain't fit t'
teach the rule o' three ! I've just ben a- Sabbath down at New
Leb'non ; and the Lord's a-pourin' 'em out a blessin' that they
ain't room ter receive — bless His name ! Why, you never saw
such a cleaver as that 'ere leader swings. He don't leave a
refuge standin' — not one ! — nothin' but the mercy seat ! —
knocks the props clean out f'om under the whole coboodle of
'em ! Bless the Lord ! Why, they ain't nothin' for a sinner to
do, but jest t' come and git saved, when Brother Vivian wields
the cleaver. And when the band of virgins leads the praise, the
glory comes right down — sinners kneel in rows around the
altar. Hoaanna ! "
The 'squire's fervor seemed so sincere, that when he said, " I
say, brother, there's a hayrack of us folks goin' over to-night ;
now you jest git your sweetheart an' come along, an' git saved ! "
the young man smiled a quiet assent to the invitation to join the
party.
Phebe and Nathan were the first to be picked up by the 'squire
and his hayrack. The remainder of the load was composed of
the Free Methodist " sisters " of the community, who, as they
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HOSANNA OF KA-BOB. 381
joined the party, nudged each other, and did an amount of whis-
pering anything but agreeable to the shy girl and her escort.
There was a vein of levity and bantering, on the journey to
the New Lebanon church, which, the age of the participants con-
sidered, not a little surprised Nathan, and impressed him as being
an inappropriate prelude to the serious business of "getting
saved,' a process as yet undefined in his mind.
As they entered the quaint little church, the swinging measures
of the hymn, which had just been started, seemed to catch him
up in a strange enthusiasm, which sent the blood tingling through
his veins. Near the doors which opened from the front entry
stood two old-fashioned box stoves, surmounted by ponderous
sheet-iron drums. From each of these stoves meandered a line
of stove pipe, the ultimate destination of which was a hole in the
wall, at either side of the low pulpit, at the other end of the
church. This fact, however, could not have been suspected
from the direction of any individual length of pipe. The holes
into which the pipes disappeared were festooned, for several inches
beneath, by a dirty, lingering drizzle of soot and rust. The
" altar," as the low pulpit was commonly called, was on a second
platform, the first and larger one being surrounded by a railing,
inside of which the " seekers " knelt. This railing formed a sort
of dead-line, once beyond which, sinners were thought to be no
longer gospel proof.
After the 'squire's bevy of sisters had exchanged nods of
greeting with acquaintances throughout the congregation, the
house became so full that it was with difficulty that a thin, wiry
woman made her way up the aisle. She advanced directly toward
Nathan, and the air of expectancy which seemed to settle upon
the congregation, as they noticed her movements, gave him the
unpleasant presentiment that something was about to happen.
Greatly to Nathan's relief, the 'squire started the hymn, —
*' Oh, you must be a lover of the Lord,
Or you can't go to heaven when you die ! "
The woman who stood before Nathan, presenting her hand,
was dressed in a close-fitting, ulster-like suit of gray alpaca. Her
low, square forehead was crowned with smooth saddles of shining,
streaked hair and a steel-gray cottage bonnet.
There was an intensity in the expression of her face and small
black eyes strangely contradictory to the unmistakable evidences
of age, which she displayed in other ways. An air of peremp-
tory leadership made itself felt in her every word and motion.
Nathan took her extended hand 'with the manner of a person
willing to invite further surprises. She lifted her eyes, slightly
bent her knees, and then arose with a piercing shriek of " Glory ! "
Like the signal cry of the wolf which first sights a victim, her
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382 THE ARENA.
frenzied shriek awoke a chorus of replies from every part of the
house. This imparted a new zest to the singing, and seemingly
the entire audience caught up the song and sang it with a wild,
free, joyous abandon that was irresistible.
Before the hymn had ceased, men and women came from all
parts of the house and knelt inside the railing, about the altar ;
and by the time the last notes died away, the familiar voice of
" Sister Fox," who had saluted Nathan, was raised in prayer, and
all eyes were directed toward the altar.
She was standing upon her knees just inside the altar-rail, her
white face turned toward the audience and her hands clasped one
moment in an attitude of devotion upon her bosom, the next
brought low to the floor or raised imploringly above her head,
but never for an instant did she relax their rigid clasp.
From her lips poured forth a rhapsody of prayer, which depicted
the hideousness of sin, the despairing condition of the lost, and
the agonies of the damned. She implored the vilest sinner to
come and taste the joys of salvation, and besought a merciful
God to withhold His righteous vengeance and send His convict-
ing Spirit to arrest sinners in their downward way.
A babel of responses greeted every sentence of her prayer.
When sin and retribution were her theme, groans and shrieks of
anguish arose from the kneeling throng ; and when eternal joys
were pictured, and the presence of " th' Sperit " implored, the
clear voice of the 'squire might be heard exclaiming : " Yes, yes y
Lord ! Amen ! Bless His name ! Praise Him ! Oh, my Lord
— come — just now, come. Yes, yes ! Hosanna ! "
Had it not been for the peculiar, hound-like quality of the voice
of the principal speaker in this supplicating throng, it would
have been to Nathan an inextricable confusion of tongues ; but
the voice of Sister Fox, clear, resonant, and penetrating, could be
heard as distinctly " in the lead " as was ever the ringing bay of
the fleet " leader " of a "pack."
Brother Vivian came in person to urge upon Phebe the accept-
ance of his general invitation to all who wanted to get saved, to
come forward to the anxious seat, while the Pentecost Band
should sing, —
" Turn, turn, sinner turn!
Oh, what will you do in that day ? "
Seeing that she was " under conviction," he continued to urge
the lost state of those who refused to heed the " Sperit' s call."
He urged her to come out into the light and put away the world,
confess her secret sins, and cast herself wholly upon the mercy of
the Lord, who was able to save u unto the uttermost"
Like the hunter who perceives, by crimson drops upon the trail
of the fleeing doe, that his aim has been unerring, and presses the
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HOSANNA OF KA-BOB. 383
wounded game the more closely, so the lean " leader," noting the
suppressed sobs which shook the girl's frame, took her hand and
held it, while he pictured, in words distinctly audible to Nathan,
her awful condition if she refused to forsake the sins, vanities,
and allurements of the world. What if she should go to her
home and to an impenitent bed, and God should call her to an
account that very night ? Terrible thought — to be lost for all
eternity !
Turning to the audience, he urged all hesitating souls to come
forward and prostrate themselves before the altar and before
God — and might God have mercy on all who neglected this last
opportunity !
The band started the sacred hymn : —
" Nothing but the blood of Jesus."
A hush fell upon the excited house, as one voice after another
joined in the swelling anthem. The 'squire stood erect upon the
altar steps, sweeping with his bright, restless eyes the scene
before him, locating the exhorters who were pleading with
reluctant sinners.
Suddenly, like a general who sights a break in the enemy's
ranks, his eyes, before bright, now became luminous; his smile
broke into sunshine; and as Sister Fox led one of the hardest
characters in all the Big Woods toward the altar, he shouted,
" Hosanna to His name ! " and brought the palms of his hands
together with a concussion which rang above the voices of
exhortation and song.
" Yesy Lord ; yes, they are coming ! Amen ! Hallelujah !
Glory f God/" Turning toward Phebe, he exclaimed, " Oh,
child, grieve not the Sperit ! Break away ! Yes, Lord, break
her chains ; loose her bonds ; give her liberty ! 7/o-sanna ! "
One moment she hesitated. Expectant stares from every
direction were centred upon her. Then she lifted her inquiring,
tearful eyes to Nathan, touched his arm with a trembling hand,
and sobbed : —
" I'm going ! "
She suffered the victorious Vivian to lead her, like a lamb, to
the altar.
Before the last measure of the hymn was finished, the deep
voice of Brother Vivian was lifted in wild, broken, ecstatic prayer,
reinforced by amens, exclamations, groans, hand clappings, and
poundings, while now and then a shrill, quivering shriek from
Sister Fox would send the cold chills through Nathan's uninitiated
nerves.
The throng around the altar was the centre of a magnetic
storm, which charged outward to every part of the room.
Before the leader had finished his prayer, his voice had become
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384 THE ABENA.
so strained and hoarse that he could only shout a few words
before being compelled to cease and draw breath.
This operation, though loud and husky, was sufficiently low to
permit Nathan to hear the breaking, hysterical sobs of Phebe and
the others who had come forward to " git saved."
When Brother Vivian was compelled, from sheer exhaustion,
to permit a final " Amen " to his prayer, the kneeling throng
arose, took the front seats, and those penitents who had " got the
light " were called upon to give in their " testimony."
After the burly denizen of the Big Woods had made his
homely confession of a life of untamed wickedness, Phebe arose.
Her tears had long been spent, but their burning traces were
apparent. She leaned heavily upon the altar rail. Her voice,
though strained and unnatural, had a pitiful plaintiveness, as she
said: —
u I feel that I am a very great sinner, but I want to give myself
to Jesus, right now ! "
She could say no more, but broke down in a storm of sobs.
" Bless the Lord ! Another soul saved ! Make it a pentecost ! "
shouted the valiant Vivian, anxious that this new star in his
crown should not be dimmed by the rising influence of the Ka-
Bob 'squire.
But the " Hosanna " that rang from the 'squire's smiling lips,
as he nervously twisted the fingers of one hand free from the
grasp of his other, was too hearty to betray any suspicion of
Brother Vivian's jealous fears.
As the virgins led the hymn, " Come to Jesus, just now,"
Sister Fox and the 'squire knelt on either side of the crouching,
quivering little body of Phebe.
The girl's face was buried in her hands, which rested on the
foot of the altar.
Sister Fox placed her long, thin arm about Phebe's waist, and
the 'squire bowed his head against the altar, close beside the
weeping penitent.
Occasionally Phebe would nod her head in assent to questions
with which the 'squire and Mother Fox were plying her.
While the virgins were holding the last tremulous note of the
hymn, Mother Fox sprang to her feet with the agility of a cat,
and shrieked : —
" Hallelujah I The light is breaking! She's in the way!
Glory ! Glory ! Glory ! "
Each of these ejaculations was emphasized by the full powers
of a piercing voice, and with each exclamation she bounded from
the floor, as if carried skyward by the force of her feelings.
The 'squire rose from his knees, and as he did so, touched
Phebe's arm.
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HOSANNA OF KA-BOB. 385
She intuitively followed his example and stood beside^ him, her
hand resting upon his sleeve.
These two slight, and, under the circumstances, quite natural
acts, started Nathan from the strange trance into which the spell
of the hour had drawn him with the same disagreeable sensation
that he had experienced when standing in the schoolhouse door,
as the 'squire had passed Phebe by the roadside.
* But a few minutes later he was almost ready to smile at his
foolish super-sensitiveness; for the 'squire had left Phebe and
was passing through the congregation, in the body of the church,
shaking hands with all, and exhorting sinners to come forward
and "git salvation." The same feeling, however, returned to the
teacher more strongly than before, when, at the close of the
meeting, the 'squire took Phebe' s arm, walked with her to the
horse block, and helped her into the hayrack.
Nathan took the same seat that he had occupied in coming,
and spread out the robes beside him for Phebe.
Instead of taking her former position in the load, she seemed
entirely unconscious of his presence in the company, and seated
herself beside the 'squire.
The reaction which followed the excitement of the meeting
grew into positive depression under the chilling beams of the
harvest moon, and scarcely a word was spoken during the whole
of the long homeward ride.
The wagon paused at farmer Snow's gate long enough to allow
the 'squire to help Phebe out of the rear end, while Nathan
alighted, with an easy bound, from the side of the rack.
The 'squire detained the young convert a moment to hold her
hand in a fatherly clasp ; and as Nathan loitered slowly up the
gravel walk, he overheard such fragments of exhortation as
"entire consecration," "putting away the things of the world,"
and " constant in prayer." When the wagon started on and she
overtook Nathan, neither of them spoke a word.
Nathan stepped upon the side porch and handed his com-
panion the key, after unlocking the door.
Darting a mute, pathetic appeal from eyes reddened by weep-
ing and soft with tears, she whispered : — 1
" Oh, I know I've been wretched company, Mr. Oakley ; but
it's all so strange — such a whirl! — it's such an awful, awful
world!"
Then she vanished into the house, leaving Nathan outside in
the moonlight, with only her outbreaking sobs, as she threw her-
self into the nearest chair and buried her face in her hands, for a
farewell — a very different farewell from that which surged from
the awakened depths of Nathan's heart, firing lip and eye with a
tenderness and a passion which had never before burned within
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S86 *HE ABENA.
them ! How he longed to reach, with the soothing touch of his
deep, true love, her poor, shuddering, fear-hunted heart, still
quivering from the emotional storm that had been so mercilessly
loosed upon its tender cords by the strong, magnetic hands and
masterful sympathies of the exhorters.
*******
The great Pentecostal whirlpool at New Lebanon not only
swelled until the Big Woods and Ka-Bob communities were in
its grasp, but it created new eddies of excitement at Lodi, Busti,
and wherever there was a " Free " church society.
The first meeting which Nathan attended at New Lebanon
was soon regarded as a tame and spiritless prelude to the
religious carnival that succeeded.
When, this excitement and its consequent loss of rest had been
prolonged into weeks of unbroken, agonizing tensity, the nervous
powers of at least the female portion of the community reached
an abnormally sensitive extreme. It was then that certain super-
sensitive and tensely strung temperaments became subject to that
crowning visitation of divine grace, known in the evangelical
vocabulary as " the power."
It was only at a late hour of night, when the meeting reached
its crucial heat, that these "favored of the Sperit" would yield
to the rude hypnotism unconsciously exerted by the strong mag-
netic master-natures of the male exhorters, who had won their
spiritual spurs by virtue of this very superabundance of physical
and emotional force.
It was with infinite pity and pain that Nathan saw Phebe
drawn down into the very vortex of this cataclysm. Her attend-
ance at school was intermittent, and study a perfunctory formality.
The soft curves of her shapely girlish face were sharpening them-
selves into points and angles ; the clear, fresh blpom of her cheeks
gave place in turn to a yellow pallor or a hectic flush, according
to her mood ; and her sweet, cupid's bow lips shared the strained,
unnatural expression of her eyes. She was extremely shy of her
teacher, and never spent a moment in his presence save when
others were about.
One day the rumor became current among the scholars that
Phebe Snow had "had the power" the night before at the New
Lebanon meeting, and that she was going with the Pentecost
Band and a few leading exhorters, to assist in a series of meet-
ings at the Busti church, for the ingathering of the harvest of
souls which were ready to fall easy prey to Brother Vivian's
wide-cutting spiritual cleaver, and the shining sickles of the vir-
gins and exhorters.
Nathan had keenly noted and closely analyzed every element
in the situation.
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HOSANNA OP KA-BOB. 387
" Phebe," said4ie, as she was hurriedly passing his desk, with
her books gathered into a neat bundle, " will you please wait a
moment? I want to speak to you ; and I'll walk along with you
if you please."
She waited in the entry while he placed his desk in order ; and
when they passed out the door, he saw that she was in tears ; and
although this had been of late no uncommon occurrence with
nearly all his pupils — all of whom, save those just beyond the
baby age, were either " under conviction " or laboring to place
others in that condition — it touched him strongly.
u Don't cry, Phebe," said he, laying his hand gently upon her
trembling arm. " You are very tired with all the excitement
which you have passed through ; and I want to beg you, as a
teacher and as a friend, to spare yourself awhile."
"Oh, but you know that — that — I love Jesus," she stam-
mered, " and — and — and sinners."
"Then I hope that I'm a very great sinner."
"Howd'y-do, Nathan. Why, it's you, Sister Phebe! Now
both o' y' jest pile right in here — lots o' room — no trouble —
goin' right your way ! "
It was the 'squire. They had been so much absorbed in each
other's words that he had come so close upon them that his
salutation made even Nathan start visibly.
"Without waiting for a reply to his invitation, the 'squire
"cramped" his buggy, dismounted, and took hold of Phebe's
hand to help her in.
Her cheeks were burning with confusion. She cast one falter-
ing, appealing glance into Nathan's eyes. It was a moment of
supreme decision ; but the strange spell of the impulsive, un-
thinking hypnotist triumphed over the fine, philosophic mind
of the lover, and led the girl captive.
" No, I'm not going home just now," said Nathan, as the
'squire stepped back to allow him to get into the buggy.
The 'squire did not linger to press the invitation, but quickly
mounted and drove on.
Nathan stood still among the tall plumes of golden rod by the
wayside, and watched them disappear up the long, winding road.
He wandered along toward the farm-house where he boarded,
with a heart heavy with the load of unrequited love, and deeply
and humbly burdened for the pitiful sorrows of those about him,
who saw through the glass of ignorance darkly, understanding
less of themselves and their own subtle forces of body and mind,
than of the secrets of the storms of the seasons, and of the
star-strewn night.
How bravely he bore that deep-thrusted wound which found
no healing with the weary months, no one will ever know. His
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388 THE ABENA.
hand was the oftener laid with caressing tenderness upon the
flaxen heads of the little " Bobbers," who came to count him
their most royal playfellow. He built them marvellous water-
wheels, and carp ponds in the brook, and piloted them about the
ruins of the old sawmill that stood close by the roadside opposite
the deserted house of the builder ; he dug for them the first bitter
joints of crinkle root that grew under the elder bushes, and led
them to the places where the first fresh, green shoots of fragrant
wintergreens broke their woodland mould.
Immediately after Nathan's talk with Phebe, she verified the
rumor concerning her future movements by accompanying the
Pentecost Band and Brother Vivian on their evangelical campaign
to Busti, Lodi, and other more distant neighborhoods.
Her parents were flattered by the glowing reports of her grow-
ing spiritual powers, which the 'squire brought from the scene of
their labors on his occasional home visits.
He not only played a leading rdle in the meetings, but also the
humbler part of male chaperon to " the Band," conveying the
sisters from place to place with his team.
The revivals continued with unabated zeal all winter, and it
became generally understood that Phebe had been received into
full and permanent fellowship with the Band, and that she was
to accompany one of " the virgins " to the latter's home, for a
short vacation, when the meetings broke up, and there recruit
for the summer's campaign in the distant city. An entire change
of scene would benefit her and build her up again, her mother
told inquiring friends.
But the vague hope that she might return home, even for a
day, kept Nathan in the neighborhood after his school had closed
for the sugaring season and spring ploughing.
One day, when the soft, fragrant air was full of the subtle
pathos of spring, and every sensibility of his being was translated
into a fiercely tender yearning for Phebe, he yielded to an impulse
which drew him to the schoolhouse. Could it be that he would
meet her or find her there? He almost dared to hope it, so
strong was the inward drawing that controlled him. He might
at least find some book or scrap of paper in her desk which would
contain a fragment of her handwriting.
As he neared the schoolhouse and stood upon the spot where
he had last looked into her face, his strength of limb seemed
suddenly to desert him, and it was with difficulty that he con-
tinued his walk. His faculties were abnormally sensitive and
alert.
Like a sudden thrust from a secret blade, came to Nathan the
sweetly plaintive cry of a shy Quakerish little bird, darting in
and out from under the bridge, adding mite by mite to the
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HOSANNA OF KA-BOB. 389
masonry of the mud nest, which snuggled against the side of one
of its dusty old " sleepers."
" Phe-be I JPhe-be ! " it called with merciless repetition.
He pushed hastily into the schoolhouse, threw himself into
Phebe's seat, and, with his head bowed upon the desk made
sacred by her familiar touch, endured the Gethsemane which
comes to all great souls. When he passed out he was ready —
yes, eager — for the cup of bitterness which his f ea^s anticipated.
When spring work was again fully under way, the community
resumed its normal life, and the inevitable post-Pentecostal
reaction made " the faithful " fear that the largest crop of the
season would be that of " backsliders. 9 '
Autumn came at last. The warm, soft haze of Indian summer
wrapped the marshy flats and tinted woods. It had always been
a season of keen delight to Nathan ; but as he locked the school-
house door, he wondered if it would ever entirely recover its
charm for him. He hurried on toward home.
A group of children had stopped by the roadside, in front of
the old deserted house, to divide the fragments of lunch left in
their dinner-pails, and to wait for the 'squire's eldest child, who
was executing the difficult feat of hitching up her refractory
stocking, without slackening her speed, while attempting to over-
take her little playmates. When she had nearly joined them, she
suddenly stopped. For a moment not a child in the group stirred.
Then there was a dropping of dinner pails, and a wild rush for
the approaching master. He knew the fear in which the children
stood of the house, because of its reputation for being haunted.
They crowded closely about him, and between sobs of fright
explained that they had heard strange cries coming from the old
house.
He soothed them until they suffered him to lead them past,
and then told them that he would go into the house and see if
there was anything there.
The children scampered away to the 'squire's and excitedly
poured their story into his ears, until he also promised to go
soon and investigate the nature of the visitant. As he owned
the old house, he thought best to see what it was sheltering.
Nathan returned to the old moss-spotted picket gate, strode up
the unfrequented, weed-grown path, and pushed open the front
door with the boldness of one sure of intruding upon nothing but
space.
There in the corner of the room, bending over a tiny, sleeping
babe, was Phebe Snow, wasted by travail, want, and the weari-
ness of carrying her baby through the woods that stretched over
the hills from the distant railway station to the rear of the old
house ! He saw it all at a glance : her poor, staggering, hopeless
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390 THE AKENA.
f ootsteps ; the knots and brambles which had scratched her shiny
cambric dress into a fringe of tatters about her swollen ankles ;
and the burden of the fretful, hungry child !
The shock of Nathan's sudden appearance overcame her feeble
powers, and she fell in a faint.
Rushing to the spring- house adjoining, Nathan scooped from
its pebbled basin his hat full of water, and with this brought the
girl back to consciousness.
" Oh, Nathan ! " she cried, " that you should have found out
my shame first of all ! Oh, go away — leave me — let me die !
Oh, if I could only die/"
" Don't, Phebe, don't ! " said Nathan, as the old fire shot from
his tender eyes. " It kills me to hear you talk so ! Let me tell
you, Phebe, what I have longed to tell you for all these months.
I love you. Let me share all your life."
For a moment the wild despair faded from Phebe's eyes, but it
quickly surged back again with added force.
" But — but — you can never share — that I " she sobbed,
pointing to the babe, whose sleep had been undisturbed.
" Yes, that — all — everything ! You liave no burden that
will not be light to me, if I may help you carry it. Will you let
me, Phebe?"
Tears were her only answer, as Nathan kissed her poor, pinched
cheeks and burning eyes until the sweet comfort of his love
possessed her heart.
" I'll go and tell your folks," he said, after a few moments,
" and then I'll come back for you."
At the spring-house, Nathan came suddenly upon the 'squire,
fumbling in his hands a worn and crumpled copy of the New
Testament. He met Nathan's glance with eyes full of fear,
shame, and confusion.
" Yes," said Nathan calmly. " She's in there — she and the
child — but" —
" O ray Lord ! " broke in the 'squire, in the favorite phrase-
ology of the exhorter's bench, which had become second-nature
to him. " I'm smitten ! I'm wndone ! My God, have mercy on
a poor worm-o'-th'-dust! She's told ye all, Brother Nathan!
She's told ye all ! "
The two men stood face to face, and never had the disparity
between them been so great. One was the mirror of the
unthinking impulse of the moment — the other the embodiment
of that spirit of light which discerns, with spiritual insight,
between sins of motive and mistakes of ignorance.
" Go back to your home and to your family and " —
" But what about the child ? And, oh, must I give up Jesus ? "
again interrupted the 'squire.
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HOSANNA OF KA-BOB. 391
It had been upon Nathan's tongue to tell the 'squire that an
ignorant yielding to mesmeric power, which passes in evangelical
circles for the influence of the Holy Spirit, was responsible for
the tragedy in which they were principals and victims. But an
intuitive realization of the religionist's inability to grasp or accept
this normal and philosophic explanation of his own downfall
caused Nathan to drop into despairing silence for a moment, and
then simply reply : —
" The child, so far as the world is concerned, will be my child,
for all that is Phebe's will soon be mine, and your secret is safe."
After a moment's awkward pause, filled T>y the bitter reflec-
tion that neither of those for whom his sacrifice was made would
ever understand it, Nathan extended his hand and abruptly
said : —
" Well, good night ! "
The 'squire stood and watched him in blind amazement as he
hurried away across the fields.
On the following day Nathan gave up his school and married
Phebe.
The buoyant smile faded from the 'squire's lips. He forsook
the chief exhorter's bench for the humblest of the sinners' seats
in the rear of the church ; his voice lost its resonance and ring
in hosannas and amens, and even his prayers and testimonies
were few. He spent more time with his wife and children and
at the bedsides of the sick than formerly. But it was only for a
time. When the perennial season of revival returned with the
week-of-prayer, his period of expiation seemed at an end, and he
changed the penitential sack-cloth of his humility for "the
harness of the Lord," in which he labored with his old-time
vigor, to the joy and glory of the church from which Phebe was
hopelessly exiled.
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CAN IT BE ?
WARNER WILLIS FRIES.
Fm sort uv all stirred up like,
I've heard sech amazin' news;
They do say th' Presbytery's
Gone to work an' changed its views,
So that babes that die a-bornin'
Haint without th' means uv grace;
An' if that's so, those I've buried
May not be in no bad place.
How my wanderin' thoughts go fly in'
Down th' path uv by-gone years,
Till I see, through sobs an' sighin',
Wretched mothers bathed in tears!
How I watch, with achin' bosom,
Pain's sharp finger daily trace
Lines uv horror deeper, thicker,
On my darlin' wife's wan face!
See her cheeks robbed uv their roses!
See white threads come in her hair!
Miss th' merry, girlish laughter!
Hear the pathus uv her prayer!
Oh! it comes back like a nightmare,
That hot, stifflin' arternoon,
Long in June time, when I found her
Ravin', crazy as a loon!
How her blazin' eyes glared at me
When she give that awful yell!
Screechin' dreadful things! repeatin'
"Oh, I want to go to hell!
Let me go an' find my babies!
Let me go — I hate th' Lord! "
An' sech tumble blasphemies
As before I never heard.
Wall, her sufferin's is endid,
Twenty year ago, ur more;
But she died in th' asylum,
An' I wish we'd knowed before
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CAN IT BE? 393
How that that thare Presbytery
Was a-goin' to change its mind ;
'T would uv saved a lot uv trouble,
An' God would uv seemed more kind.
Can it be it's God that's changed it?
Can it be that it's changed God?
My ole brain is fairly whirlin',
But His ways must be adored.
I'm glad if my little children,
Which we buried, can now share
In His marcies, up in heaven,
An' '11 meet their mother there.
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WELL-SPRINGS OF PRESENT-DAY IMMORALITY.
BY B. O. FLOWER.
From the moral leper in high life, and from the youth removed
from home restraint and contaminated by a vicious atmosphere,
down to the depths of the social cellar — through every stratum
of life to-day may be seen the soul-destroying influence of
immorality. And just here, how impressively come to us the
warning voices of the past : Greece, proud in her matchless
learning, and clad in the glory of art, died amid her splendor
when the moral was eclipsed by the sensual; Rome, at the
moment when she was mistress of the world, with the wealth
of empires within her walls, witnessed the soul pass forth, with
no power to stay its flight, from a home polluted by licentious-
ness. Indeed, purity is as essential to soul life as is oxygen to
animal existence; and if our present civilization is to triumph
over sensualism, it must be by the development and mainte-
nance of that sturdy morality which countenances naught in
thought, word, or life which tends to pollute the soul. To me
the problem is one of inestimable moment, for on it hangs the
fate of home, nation, and civilization.
In my studies of social problems I have been so often thrilled
with horror by various aspects of this corrupting and insidious
poison, that I have been led to seek for root causes that I might
be the better prepared to aid in suggesting real remedies. We
are prone to assail results, or to salve over the surface of our
social sores, leaving the roots untouched; and to this I attribute
much of the failure which has attended past efforts. I now desire,
as briefly as possible, to set forth what my investigations have led
me to consider fundamental or basic causes of present-day
immorality, and incidentally to throw out some suggestive hints
which may be helpful in this titanic battle for a purer civiliza-
tion. I would classify these causes as follows : —
1. Heredity, Prenatal Influences, and Unfortunate Early
Environment.
2. Implied Inferiority of Women.
3. Artificiality in life, or Departure from the Noble Sim-
plicity of Nature.
In the first-mentioned cause, which is threefold in nature, we
have one of the least considered and most fruitful sources of
moral degradation. Since giving this great theme my serious
394
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WELL-SPRINGS OF IMMORALITY. 395
consideration, I have studied child life in homes of wealth a!nd
luxury, amid the people of humbler circumstances, as well as in
the social cellar ; and everywhere I have been impressed with the
far-reaching influence of hereditary and prenatal influences, as
well as the power for good or evil which early environment yields.
In many instances small children have displayed a degree of
degradation and moral obliquity which sickened my soul. In
the slums of Boston my attention has frequently been called
to exhibitions of juvenile depravity which would shame aged
debauchees. Upon scores of little faces I have seen the stamp
of an overmastering sensualism, visible alike in eyes dull when
not 'passion lit ; in gross, heavy, features, and in a conspicuous
absence of mental and moral cranial development, which spake
of the supremacy of the sensual over the spiritual. Then,
again, my daily mail, with the regularity of the incoming
tide, brings the saddest strain known to human ear — the
pitiful wail of those who with weak wills are struggling to
free themselves from prenatal bondage. Here is a typical cry.
I take it from a letter just received. It fairly represents the
wail of hundreds upon hundreds whose burdens have been voiced
in ray sanctum. This extract is from a letter written by a young
man : —
Many times I have cursed my lot, and said I was a mere foot-ball of
fate. Many times I have said I was made to do wrong, owing to bodily
and mental defects, a weak will, neglected education, and coming from
an illiterate stock, an indifferent bringing up, and vicious surroundings.
And yet I have had, ever since I can remember, a strong longing to be
good.
This voice echoes the cry of an almost numberless multitude
who are cursed before they see the dawn of day. If we are to
have a diviner civilization, we must bravely and frankly face this
subject of proper generation, in its relation to human progress.
We x must open an educational agitation along these lines, which
will compel our people to give heed to a problem of supreme
importance. Parents must be awakened to the vital significance
of this question, not only by having the influence of heredity
in physical, mental, and moral traits brought home, but the
mother must be shown how largely her offspring is to be the
creature of her life, thought, and aspiration during gestation.
The mothers of Luigi Ricci and Wolfgang Mozart* participated
in musical exercises, and, to a great extent, lived in an atmos-
phere of music during the .months before these musical geniuses
were born ; and the mother of Robert Burns, it is said, sang the
humble songs and ballads of Scotland constantly, as she pursued
her daily tasks during the months prior to the birth of her son.
• See " JSdoelogy," by 8. B. Elliot, M. D~
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396 THE ARENA.
A friend of mine, who is an eminent actress, a model mother,
and a lady of fine intellectual attainments in many lines of
scholarly research, has two children who illustrate prenatal in-
fluences in a most striking manner. Before one child was born,
or rather in the early months of gestation, my friend lived a
beautiful, bright, vivacious, loving character, as she was nightly
portraying this rdle, and is so constituted that she lives the part
she assumes, as is usual with great artists. The child is the
embodiment of sunshine, and is one of those love-lit little buds
whose affection and joyousness of soul go out to all. The other
child came during a period of great intellectual activity on the
part of the mother, and she is the most philosophical little girl I
have ever known. Her penetration and intellectual insight are
marvellous. She thinks far beyond her years, and is in many
ways a most extraordinary child.
Another friend, the wife of a physician, is a born reformer,
earnest, conscientious, and filled with that lofty enthusiasm for all
that is noble which marks the modern reformer. Her mother
during the period of gestation was absorbed in aiding her father
to prepare a series of lectures, which were largely of a reforma-
tive character. Now, none of this lady's sisters are in any way
interested in progressive or reformative work, and it was only
during this time that her mother was profoundly stirred along
these lines. Scores of similar cases could be given. They hint
at a power possessed by the strong-willed and earnest mother,
who, by living in a high, pure, and spiritual atmosphere, may
do a wonderful work in elevating the race . through her off-
spring. In the same way should the potent influence of early
environment be impressed. What we need, nay, what we must
have, if our civilization is to mount as it moves, is an awakened
conscience in this direction, which can only come by a brave,
earnest, and persistent educational agitation. We must make
all thinking people know and feel that not only has a child a
right to be well-born, but that to call into our homes little lives
which are unwelcome, as a result of selfish sensualism, or to be
responsible for the advent of any life which is not the cherished
and desired blossom of a pure and exalted love, is to commit a
crime of measureless proportions. The hour has struck for a
holy moral crusade^ not to capture an empty sepulchre^ but to
exalt humanity by quickening the divine in man. The conscience
in man and woman must be awakened as Luther awakened the
conscience of Germany in the sixteenth century. It is a subject
for education rather than legislation. Probably not ten persons
in a hundred who have the opportunity to steal are restrained by
thought of law. They have had their consciences so educated
that no thought of legal restraint occurs to them. It is wrong,
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WELL-SPRINGS OF IMMORALITY. 397
and that is enough. So we must compel our people to see that
those who bring children into the world merely as results of
passional gratifications, commit moral crime as heinous in char-
acter as murder.
In the second place, I would mention, as a basic cause of
impurity, the implied inferiority of woman. This long-linger-
ing curse of a barbaric past is responsible for a large proportion
of the immorality found to-day. First, it has resulted in a
double standard of morality, only possible through the long dom-
inance and mastery of the masculine sex. Had woman been
free, she would long since have demanded from man what
he demands from her. It has placed her in a position of slavish
dependence upon man which has been mutually injurious. For
ages, to a great extent his slave, toy, plaything, and the drudge
who bore his children, she has slowly arisen as civilization pro-
gressed ; but the bondage of the past, like a curse, has to a great
extent clung to her, and its influence is seen in the civil ine-
quality which places millions of girls and women at a disadvan-
tage in the struggle for bread, and compels them yearly to accept
degradation or starvation. It is seen in man-made laws, which
place the legal age when girls may consent to their ruin from
nine to thirteen years. It is seen within the marriage bond,
where legalized prostitution of the most revolting character is so
frightfully common; where, without any legal redress, wives
become slaves to the lust of thoughtless or brutal husbands ; and
where the health and happiness of the slave- wives are sacrificed,
while unwelcome children come to curse the world and further
weaken the moral fabric of society. Who among the readers of
this paper has not at some time known persons whose homes
were filled with discord and hate ; homes from whose altars love
had flown, but where, amid altercations, broils, and inharmony,
unwelcome children came — children who were cursed before
. they were born, cursed in the environment of loveless homes,
doomed to go through life with hateful dispositions, and fre-
quently with inborn appetites for strong drink, and with low
moral development, weak wills, and strong animal passions ; chil-
dren who were the terrible fruit of the most hopeless form of
prostitution — the helpless slavery of woman, with the attendant
curse of enforced motherhood.
Until woman is accorded perfect justice, until she stands in
deed and reality, as well as in name, squarely on an equality with
man, it will be idle to dream of a race higher in soul develop-
ment and more morally robust than the present. Hence, here
again lies a patent duty.
The old idea of woman's inferiority has come down to us from
a barbarous past, and it has been reinforced by religion. The
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398 THE ABENA.
great Indian religions have failed to elevate the mothers of the
race. Mohammedanism has enslaved and degraded woman, and
the freedom Rome gave to womanhood, which stood out in such
bold relief from the servility of Grecian civilization, unfortunately
was not reflected from the pages of our Bible. Had Paul's opin-
ions been colored by Roman instead of Grecian thought, woman's
progress through the past fifteen centuries would not have been
hampered by such passages as the following : « Let the woman
learn in silence with all subjection. I suffer not a woman to teach
nor usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For
Adam was first formed, then Eve, and was not deceived, but the
woman being deceived was in the transgression." This Greek
prejudice, reinforced by the Hebrew legend of creation, has been
flung across woman's pathway as the voicing of the Infinite, and
every step taken by woman toward a broader life and a higher
freedom has been opposed by the church, often with all the
intensity and power of reasonless fanaticism, wedded to blind
faith. Her triumph over what for centuries has been regarded as
a direct mandate of God, however, has been as noteworthy as it
has been beneficent for civilization. But in many minds the old-
time conception of inferiority still in a great measure prevails.
This must be combated at all times ; while her right to the free-
dom of herself within the marriage bond, which has so long been
denied her, must be demanded. If wives were given absolute
control of their bodies, and the right to say when they would
become mothers, if at the altar they became possessed of one
half the property interests of their husbands, it would be in-
finitely better for humanity, and the servitude and dependence
which now compel numbers of women to become slaves to their
husbands' passion, would disappear; while husbands who now
take advantage of the privileges accorded by the wife's depen-
dent condition would come to treat their companions in deed and
fact as equals. In the offspring of such unions, also, we would
find a higher type of children. Woman's franchise also should
be given her, that no unjust discriminations like the age-of-
consent laws could endure, and that the wage-earners, now so
largely at the mercy of employers, might enjoy the freedom
which will not be theirs until they are armed with the ballot ;
and finally, because equal franchise is just and right, and any
withholding of justice is immoral in its influence.
This brings me to the third root cause, artificiality in life,
or departure from the simplicity of nature.
It would seem, as man rose in the scale of intellectual de-
velopment, as the brain blossomed, and mere brutal or animal
instincts bowed before a cultivated mind, that the spiritual nature
would also unfold, and from this higher citadel of life would
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WELL-SPRINGS OF IMMORALITY. 399
come the splendor which alone can bring peace, make pleasure
lasting, and give to man the deep, unalloyed delight of unselfish
love — and this, doubtless, might have been the result, had not an
element of artificiality entered into life with the intellectual de-
velopment, which responded to the vanity of the mind and the
unbridled passion of the body. Had humanity preserved in life
the beautiful simplicity which has characterized the lives of so
many of the world's noble philosophers, sages, and poets, and
which in our own time and land found beautiful expression in
Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Emerson, Thoreau, and Alcott,
long ere this, man would have become master of the secrets of
the ages, and a reign of peace and happiness, which has mani-
fested itself in the persistent dream of the nobler brains of the
ages, would have become a reality. Instead of this, wholesome
naturalness was supplanted by artificiality along all lines of life.
Fashion and conventionalism catered to private and ignoble
whims and desires, while the sensuous in man was abnormally
developed until at intervals it gained the mastery over the higher
nature of a people, with the fatal result to the civilization in ques-
tion which we see in the wrecks of national life which strew tli£
ages. The soul of any nation or people departs when sensualism
usurps the throne of judgment, and passion sways where reason
once ruled. This most hopeless of all fates overtook the civiliza-
tions of the Orient, of Greece, and of Rome. Just in proportion
as a civilization has departed from simplicity of nature, has that
civilization deteriorated. Do not understand me as intimating
that simplicity excludes profundity, or that it implies return to
primeval conditions any further than it demands the discarding
of that artificiality in fife which enervates the soul, enfeebles the
brain, injures the healthful development of the body, and fosters
the passions. Nowhere do we find the baleful influence of artifi-
ciality so marked as in the gratifying of the appetite, in gluttony,
in the employment of highly seasoned condiments, and all things
which excite the passions to an abnormal degree. Among these,
intoxicants and opium occupy the most conspicuous place, as in
each case they tend to enthrone the passions and anaesthetize the
moral sensibilities. There is something terrible beyond description
in the subtle power exerted by alcoholic stimulants and opium
upon man's higher nature. They obliterate all lines of moral recti-
tude, while feeding the sensuous in his being. And in the case of
liquor the influence extends from the victim to his offspring, who
is frequently cursed with his father's appetite, and is predisposed
to insanity. Moreover, it has been observed that in many cases
the children of those who drink seem, from early childhood, to
harbor the dreams of assassins, while deep affectional instincts
are often apparently absent. On this point, Hugues le Roux, in
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400 THE ARENA.
a thoughtful paper on " Phases of Crime in Paris," cites the
eminent Dr. Paul Gamier, chief medical officer of the prefecture
of police, as authority for the statement, that in. "Paris, during
the past sixteen years, lunacy has increased thirty per cent."
Here is an appalling statement, and the author continues : —
The progress of alcoholic insanity has been so rapid that the evil is
now twice as prevalent as it was fifteen years ago. Almost a third of
the lunacy cases observed at the Depot Infirmary are due to this disease.
Every day it declares itself more violently, and with a more marked
homicidal tendency. The accomplice of two thirds of the crimes com-
mitted, upon whom the criminals themselves throw the responsibility of
their evil deeds, is alcohol. It visits upon the child the sins of the
father, and engenders in the following generation homicidal instincts.
Since I have frequented the haunts of misery and vice in Paris, I have
observed gutter children by the hundreds who are only awaiting their
opportunity to become assassins — the children of drunkards. More-
over, there is a terrible flaw in these young wretches, a flaw which
doctors do not observe, but which the psychologist sees clearly and
notes with apprehension — the absence of affectionate emotions ; and as
a matter of fact, if these criminals are neither anaesthetiques nor lunatics,
their characteristics are insensibility and pitilessness.
What, then, is our duty here ? Inaugurate a crusade for the
return to that simplicity which characterized the life of Hugo,
during the years of his exile, .when he performed his greatest
literary work ; of Whittier, of Greeley, of the Cary sisters. Dis-
courage all departure from noble, pure simplicity, and especially
assail those vices of artificiality which are most soul destroying,
chief among which are those destroyers of civilization and nour-
ishers of degradation — alcoholic stimulants and opium'.
In a word, then, I would suggest a threefold crusade : —
1. For a childhood resulting from an awakened conscience,
the fruit of intelligence and love.
2. For absolute justice for woman — including full enjoyment
of the right of franchise, an absolute and independent possession
in the property interests of the home which results from the
union, and the absolute right to her own body.
3. For a purer, simpler, and less sensuous and extravagant
life, with a determined warfare on those things which stimulate
passion and lower the moral ideal, chief among which are intoxi-
cants and opium.
Progress along these lines means development of the highest
and best in manhood, and the enthronement of that spirituality
which nourishes the soul of true civilization.
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—
1
SOME SHAKESPEAREAN JURORS.
Rev. M.J. SAVAGE.
Rev. C. A. BARTOL.
ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE. D.C.L.
Mrs. MARY A. LIVERMORE.
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THE ARENA.
No. XLVI.
SEPTEMBER, 1898.
A M0NE5T FAMINE IN A NATION BICH IN
MONEY'S WOKTH.
BY GEO. C. DOUGLASS.
From the unrest and discontent generally pervading the
masses, there can be no doubt that some malign influence is
seriously affecting the economic world. Like the invisible
contagion-producing disease, the effects only are perceptible.
And as with such diseases, when first appearing, opinions as
to cause, nature, and appropriate treatment are varied and
conflicting.
There is a maxim, that " A disease accurately diagnosed,
is half cured." Observance of that maxim seems appro-
priate in any consideration of this subject — the malady
affecting the bodies politic of the world.
I propose to note conditions and facts clearly ascertained
exhaustively as space will permit, and without bias deduce
rational conclusions.
1. The evils complained of simultaneously invaded most
of the nations of the civilized world twenty years ago, and
in the United States were markedly ushered in by the
financial panic and convulsion of 1878, since which they
have run a continuous course, almost constantly increasing
in severity.
2. Surprising uniformity characterizes the symptoms of
the malady in all the countries suffering, though political,
social, and economic conditions differ widely. The char-
acteristic manifestations are : An insufficiency of money
Copyrighted 1803, by the Arena Publishing Co. 401
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402 THE ARENA.
with which to conduct legitimate business enterprises —
manufacturing, farming, merchandising, transportation, etc.,
conveniently — so as to secure a reasonable return of profit
to the labor and capital so employed; falling prices of every
species of property, except money, and funds bearing inter-
est payable in money; lack of confidence in financial circles;
frequent disturbance of the money markets ; indisposition of
capital to embark in industrial enterprises, but showing a
marked preference for gilt-edged, interest-bearing securities,
even at unprecedentedly low rates of interest; closing of
industrial enterprises; congestion of the markets for both
money and commodities; great increase of bankruptcy;
general demand by employers of labor for a reduction of
wages, in proportion to the reduction in the prices of labor's
products ; organization of working men to resist reductions,
involving strikes, lock-outs, boycotts, enforced idleness upon
a large percentage of laborers, assessments and contributions
from the employed for the support of the unemployed, to
prevent competition ; large increase of poverty, pauperism,
crime, insanity, suicide, and the general arraying of labor in
an attitude markedly hostile to capital ; the fearfully rapid
obliteration of the great middle class — small capitalists,
consisting of farmers, merchants, manufacturers, etc., con-
ducting their own business upon the basis of their own
capital; and on the other hand, the marvellously rapid
increase of enormous fortunes, not by productive enterprise,
but largely by speculators and manipulators of the markets
for money, stocks, and property, without adding anything to
the world's stock of wealth.
3. The twenty-five years next preceding the appearance of
these evils were characterized by remarkable prosperity, intel-
lectual activity, and quickening and expanding of the public
conscience throughout the civilized world. Political move-
ments were rapid, and resulted in the advancement of the
material, intellectual, and moral well being of the masses of
mankind. Probably no period, of four times the length, can
be found into which was crowded so much to rejoice the
patriot, philanthropist, and lover of his kind, as from 1848
to 1873.
4. While this malady is almost universal, yet there are
exceptions, both as to countries and to classes in the coun-
tries afflicted.
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A MONEY FAMINE. 403
Notwithstanding the overwhelming disaster suffered by
France just prior to the invasion of her neighbors, and not-
withstanding the enormous burdens she has since constantly
borne for war preparations, etc., yet she is prosperous, and
her producing and industrial classes are remuneratively em-
ployed, contented, thrifty, and showing every indication of
advancement to a higher plane of enlightenment.
During the last twenty years, the industries of India
have sprung into great activity and prosperity. The gen-
eral well being of its producing population is most promis-
ing, as compared with previous conditions.
Duiing the same period, Japan, though in a transitional
state, politically, secures prosperity and contentment to the
masses of her population.
All this time the people of the Spanish-American states
have been more peaceable, contented, and industrious than
since their revolt from Spain.
As to classes, it is a noticeable fact that in all the coun-
tries in which these evils appear, the money and fund
owners — speculators and manipulators of the markets for
money and property, real and personal — are exceptionally
prosperous.
5. The malady prevails with about equal severity, regard-
less of the widest differences in form and character of
political government, development of resouices, density of
population, variety of production engaging labor and cap-
ital, degree of enlightenment of the masses, grade of com-
forts secured to labor, etc.
Further, the system of revenue or taxation, so extensively
charged with being the cause of these evils, seems to produce
no effect in either mitigating or aggravating the malady.
Great Britain, with her free trade and direct taxation,
exhibits all the symptoms most severely, and a large portion
of her people are denouncing free trade as the cause of their
suffering, and demanding protection.
The continental European states, with moderately pro-
tective tariff systems, are suffering in precisely the same
way, and in about an equal degree.
The United States, with its resources as yet mostly
dormant but easily developed, which should ordinarily
afford prosperity to every good, capable citizen, suffers
severely precisely as Great Britain does, notwithstanding
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404 THE ARENA.
America has a highly protective tariff system, to which a
part of her population ascribe the ills complained of —
even as the Englishman does to free trade.
6. Then let us turn back to the time these evils first
appeared, and search for some occurrence or change common
to all the countries afflicted, that did not occur or exist in
the countries exempt. One, and only one, such can be
found. During and about 1878, all the countries afflicted
concurred in demonetizing one of the two money metals of
the world, thereby reducing by one half the volume of money
available for the transaction of their business. The coun~
tries exempt from the malady — France, India, Japan, and
the Spanish-American states, refused to concur in this
remarkable policy.
Prior to 1878 the commercial world was divided into
three classes with reference to the kind of standard money
used* One class used gold, one used silver, and the third
used both metals jointly and indiscriminately, at the ratio
of 1 to 15.5, with mints freely open for coinage, into full
legal-tender money, of all of each metal presented, thus
equalizing and balancing the use and demand for each
metal to the full extent of its production.
During and about 1873, the United States, hitherto
bimetallic, the German and Scandinavian states, and the
Netherlands, all single silver standard countries, with full
volume of money in silver, each demonetized silver and
adopted the single gold standard, thereby destroying the
equilibrium in the use and demand for the metals that have
existed so beneficially through all the ages.
This discarding of half the metallic money by five sixths
of the commercial world forced upon the retained half-gold
the whole duty hitherto performed by both, as the medium
of exchange in debt paying and price measuring.
Though silver is largely used in the gold single-standard
countries, in common with paper and gold, as a part of their
circulating medium of exchange, the legislation of 1873,
taking from silver its legal-tender attribute, has degraded it
from a money metal to a commodity, and its coined price
from money of ultimate redemption to a token of credit like
paper, to be redeemed in gold.
By the letter of the statute restoring the silver dollar, and
the intent of Congress in enacting it over the presidential
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A MONEY FAMINE. 405
veto in 1878, it was made a full legal tender for all purposes,
equally with gold; but by the unfriendly action of the
national executive, it has been permitted to serve only as
credit inoney.
By refusing to treat it as money of ultimate redemption,
the law is nullified, and the whole duty of a monetary basis
is put upon gold, thereby proportionately increasing its use
and the demand for it, and consequently appreciating its
price or purchasing power in like proportion.
But it is asserted that " The standard of value being gold,
and a specific quantity of the metal constituting the unit of
value, the intrinsic value of the metal in the unit must
prevent change in the value of the unit."
This proposition is based upon the fallacy that gold is
endowed with a certain fixed value, regardless of all chang-
ing circumstances; the falsity of which none can fail to
perceive upon a little reflection.
Suppose (it is not only supposable, but must almost
inevitably, in the course of time, be found a fact) that the
automatic system o£ money, based upon the precious metals,
be abandoned for a scientific unit of value, both the regulator
of the price, and chief source of demand, not for silver only,
but also for gold, will be gone. Suppose, again — a not im-
probable thing — that science devise some cheap substitutes,
equal in every, and superior in some, respects to gold and
silver in the useful arts ; and you have remaining only the
ornamental arts to consume, not only the already vast accu-
mulations, but the considerable quantities obtained as a by-
product with lead, copper, and other base but useful metals.
Under these changed circumstances, does any one think that
gold would hold its so-called intrinsic value ?
Gold is not possessed of intrinsic value; but like all other
property, its value or price is determined strictly in accord-
ance with the law of supply and demand.
Labor is the foundation of values ; and in the price of labor
such a quantity of property as may be required to support
the laborer in the manner demanded by the sentiment of the
state, the ultimate interest — material and moral — of the
controlling influence in the state is mainly considered.
It is estimated — by those, generally, who by long, exten-
sive, and careful observation of the whole process of obtaining
the precious metals from nature's depositories — that the total
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406 THE ARENA.
product of silver costs very much more than its coinage
value, at the ratio of 15.5 to 1 of gold. Increasing the ratio
would proportionately diminish the number of paying silver
mines, and correspondingly discourage the investment of
capital in proving superficial indications of deposits.
The unavoidable risk and loss is great for each metal, but
greater for silver, because the deposits are hidden deeper in
the earth, and therefore require a greater expenditure to
prove the presence or absence of metal in quantity and
condition to pay for mining the ore and extracting the
metal from it. .
Nearly all the great silver mines required the expenditure
of vast sums of money before it could be known whether
they would prove to be of any value. On an average, dur-
ing historic time, it has cost as much to mine one pound
of gold as to produce from twelve to fifteen and a half
pounds of silver; and upon this relative cost rests the ratio
of value between the two metals — when on an equality under
the laW) as they were prior to 1873, but have not been since
that time.
From the earliest records to 300 B. c. the ratio was 1 to 13$;
from 300 B. c. to the middle of the seventeenth century,
A. D., 1 to 12 (though from local and transient causes
occasionally the ratio ran down to as low as 1 to 10) ; from
the middle of the nineteenth century to 1893, 1 to 15.5 ;
since 1873 the difference has steadily increased, reaching
1 to 25 in 1893, though no change in the relative cost of
production has occurred.
About one fourth, more or less, of the precious metals
has been in demand for the arts ; and by common consent
of mankind, constituting a common law of the world, all
the remainder of each immediately became a part of the
world's stock of medium of exchange — money. The
demand for each of the metals for money was always
greater than the supply, because invariably the greater the
supply of real money in existence, the better the condition
of the people, from monarch to the peasant.
Until 1873 each metal was in equal demand for money of
ultimate redemption, and readily interchangeable at the
ratio then prevalent.
In 1873 most of the commercial world declared by
legislation that henceforth they would recognize only gold
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A MONEY FAMINE. 407
as money of ultimate redemption. Silver being deprived of
its legal-tender attribute, and that honor and duty being
placed exclusively upon gold, naturally and inevitably the
price of the two metals, that for four thousand years had
held together with such slight variations, now rapidly drew
apart. Gold, as measured by all other property, largely
appreciated, because the use and demand for it had been
so largely increased by legislation.
For generations three hundred and sixty grains of fine
silver — although the law, yet practically the 1 to 16 ratio
was never established — and 23.22 grains of fine gold each
seemed possessed of intrinsic value equal to one dollar,
because that amount of either metal, as soon as obtained
from nature's depositories, could be taken to the mints, and
coined into one dollar for the benefit of the holder of the
bullion. Consequently that amount of uncoined gold or
silver would each sell for or purchase as much of any
property as would one dollar of coined money.
As soon as the legislation of 1873 became operative, silver
bullion lost its hitherto apparent intrinsic value ; yet during
all the intervening time, it has been capable of purchasing
as much of every species of property (gold bullion excepted),
as it would in 1873, while the gold bullion purchases and
sells for nearly fifty per cent more of all property than at
that time.
Those instigating the legislation of 1873 at first waged
their war against gold, and by mere accidental circumstances
were led to transfer it to silver. When the immense quan-
tities of gold from Siberia, California, and Australia rapidly
swelled the volume of the world's stock of money, prices of
all property rapidly appreciated, and the purchasing power
of the fixed capital of the great money lenders of Europe
correspondingly depreciated; and although it had been much
more than doubled in purchasing power during the preceding
forty years, on account of scarcity caused by failure of the
Spanish-American mines, yet as soon as the returning tide
was against them, they violently protested, demanding that
one of the precious metals be discarded from use as money.
The product of gold was more than five times that of
silver, and gold was selected for demonetization. Most of
the states of continental Europe were in debt to these Shy-
locks nearly to the point of bankruptcy, and entirely depend-
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408 THE ARENA.
ent upon them for loans in case of need for war or other
emergencies.
Presumably, the statesmen responsible failed to appreciate
the direful influence of the demands made of them by the
fundholders. At any rate, in 1859, the several German and
Scandinavian states and the Netherlands demonetized gold,
and adopted the single silver standard. France and several
of the smaller states refused. Soon the production of gold
declined ; simultaneously the great Comstock silver lode of
Nevada was discovered; the most exaggerated accounts of its
vastness, and also that the whole Rocky and Sierra Nevada
mountain ranges were full of like vast deposits, were circu-
lated and generally believed.
These visionary reports were credited and officially re-
ported to Congress by heads of the great governmental
departments. The United States government and the Euro-
pean money-holders each sent a special commission to Cali-
fornia and Nevada to ascertain the degree of credibility to
which these fabulous reports were entitled. Each commission
was evidently carried away by the tide of wild credulity then
pervading that whole region. In their official reports, each
commission fully confirmed the exaggerations. Naturally
the fundholders were doubly alarmed, England, with all
her dependencies, except India, had the gold standard, and
would not change. It was determined to transfer the pro-
scription from gold to silver.
The war against gold had been open, but not satisfactorily
successful; so an undemonstrative method was adopted
against silver. An apparently spontaneous agitation sprang
up for an international system of weights, measures, and
coins, to facilitate international business. International con-
gresses were convened to arrange this matter, which had
suddenly become so all-important.
Finally the delegates were brought to agree to — what?
Not to a common system of weights, measures, and coins,
but to recommend to their respective governments the use of
gold only as legal tender or standard money. This accom-
plished, the congress immediately adjourned; and the subject
of a common system of weights, measures, and coins for the
world's international business ceased to be of interest.
With practically no gold in their respective countries, the
Germans, Scandinavians, Dutch, and Americans discarded
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A MONEY FAMINE. 409
silver as money, and joined Great Britain in the exclusive use
and recognition of gold as money of ultimate redemption.
This stupendous and disastrous change was effected in the
United States by some means so mysterious that neither the
members of Congress (except one, and possibly a few more,
who never deemed it expedient to admit a knowledge) nor
the president knew what they were doing when the bill of
such vast and far-reaching consequence received their ap-
proval.
Thus four fifths of the commercial world concurred in
destroying half of the world's money, and placing upon the
retained half the whole monetary duty. The European
states adopting this change at the time, had a full volume of
money all in silver, which they undertook to sell for gold.
This threatening the open mints of the Latin Union with an
excess of silver at the expense of the gold portion of their
circulation, the mints were closed against silver, and so
remain; and the strife for gold has since continued with
constantly increasing force and anxiety. Deprived of its
legal-tender attribute and right of unlimited coinage by so
large a part of this world, demand for silver diminished, and
its hitherto apparent intrinsic value disappeared.
Had the treatment of the two metals since 1873 been
reversed, can there be any doubt as to which would have
retained and which lost its so-called intrinsic value ?
The demand for money determines its value. The volume
of money relative to the volume of property and business,
determines the price of the property it is required to serve as
a medium of exchange. To illustrate: Suppose all the
money in the world placed on one side of the scales, and all
the property of the world, with its business transactions, on
the opposite side, the scales balance. Now increase or
diminish the contents of one side, the opposite remaining
unchanged ; or increase the contents of one side and diminish
the other, and still under all these changed conditions the
scales balance. But the equilibrium is maintained by an
automatic and inevitable readjustment of the value of the
money, or the price of the property.
For example, it is estimated that there is in existence
•3,800,000,000 silver, and $3,700,000,000 gold, $7,500,000,-
000 metallic money, but for the legislation of 1873. It is
estimated that the ratio of money to the property for which it
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410 THE ABBNA.
is required to serve as a medium of exchange, while varying
somewhat on account of activity, convenience, etc., will
range from 1 of money to 25 to 35 of property. For con-
venience of statement here, say 1 to 33$. It is also esti-
mated, that where stable political government exists, from $
to f of the volume of money will safely and profitably be
local credit money — fiduciary so well secured as to leave no
ground to doubt it will on demand be promptly and con-
veniently redeemed in money of ultimate redemption.
Again for convenience of statement, here assume it to be \
real, and $ fiduciary money; and we have $1 of real with its
$2 of fiduciary aid, balancing and pricing $100 of property ;
and the $7,500,000,000 of metallic money, with its $15,000,-
000,000 of fiduciary, — supposing the limit of fiduciary to
be in use, — balancing and pricing the property of the world
at $750,000,000,000.
The demonetization of silver by so large a part of the
commercial world was equivalent to the destruction of \ of
the real money of the world; thereby leaving upon the
money side of the scales but J — $5,000,000,000, which is
still required to balance and price an undiminished quantity
on the property side of the scales, and must consequently be
•readjusted in value to correspond to its increased duty ; and
consequently every dollar appreciates 50 per cent.
But it is customary, as more convenient, to refer the read-
justment to the property, and accordingly the price of the
property shrinks in the same proportion that the volume of
money has shrunken — one third. Comparison of the gen-
eral price lists of 1873 and 1893 show the shrinkage to
exceed that. Had the demonetization been by the whole
world, and been conceded to be final, the shrinkage must
have been more than half.
That this has not occurred, is owing to some of the nations
refusing to deprive themselves of the use of silver as money
of ultimate redemption; and further, in all probability, to
the uncertainty of the demonetization acts being permanent,
which uncertainty has probably induced the employment of a
larger proportion of fiduciary money than would have other-
wise been kept in use. It must be borne in mind that the
demonetization transferred silver from the required propor-
tion of real money to the permissible preparation of fiduciary
money in the gold-standard countries.
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A MONEY FAMINE. 411
At the risk of being too tedious, it is deemed advisable to
introduce evidence in support of the foregoing. Only such
as is unanimously accepted as reliable will be introduced.
Alexander Hamilton, as secretary of the United States
Treasury, in a report to Congress, said: —
To annul the use of either metal is to abridge the quantity of
circulating medium.
In referring to the same report, Thomas Jefferson said: —
I return again the report on the mint. I concur with you that
the unit must stand on both metals.
At that time the proportion of money to property in the
world was very much more than now, even with silver
restored to full monetary power at the old ratio of 1 to 15.5.
In 1869 Count Wolowski, testifying before the French
Monetary Convention, said: —
The sum total of the precious metals is reckoned at 50 millards,
£ gold and J silver. If by a stroke of the pen they suppress one of
the metals in the monetary service, they double the demand for the
other to the ruin of all debtors.
Before the same convention M. Rouland, governor of the
Bank of France, said: —
We have not to do with ideal theories. The two money metals
have actually co-existed since the origin of human society. They
co-exist because the two together are necessary, by their quantity, to
meet the needs of circulation.
Baron Rothschild, on the same occasion, said: —
The simultaneous employment of the two metals is satisfactory,
and gives no rise to complaint. Whether gold or silver dominates
for the time being, it is always true that the two metals concur
together in forming the monetary circulation of the world ; and it is
the general amount of the two methods combined which serves as the
measure of value of things. The suppression of silver would amount
to a veritable destruction of values without any compensation.
At the close of this convention, arguments for and against
the demonetization of silver were submitted, from which I
extract the following from the single standard advocates'
side. They say: —
The rise in prices which has taken place in the past 20 years, in a
great number of articles of merchandise is evidently due to many
causes, such as bad harvests, increased consumption, and war; but
it is very probable that a depreciation of the precious metals has con-
tributed to it, and there has been a striking coincidence between the
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412 THE ABEXA.
rise of prices and the production of the mines of gold and silver.
The annual product of the two metals was only $80,000,000 in 1847,
and now exceeds $200,000,000. It has nearly tripled, and it is easy
to see that the real value of the metals has diminished. It is difficult
to estimate exactly what the diminution is; but whatever it may be, it
demands the attention of governments, because it affects unfavorably
all that portion of the population whose income, remaining nominally
the same, yet undergoes a diminution of purchasing power.. As
governments control the weight of standard money, they ought, as
far as possible, to assure its value; and as it is admitted that it is the
tendency of the metals to depreciate, the tendency should be averted
by demonetizing one of them.
In 1879 Lord Beaconsfield, in a speech, said : —
Gold is every day appreciating in value; and as it appreciates, the
lower become prices of all other property.
Adam Smith, in his work " Wealth of Nations," says : —
Gold and silver, like every other commodity, vary in their value.
The discovery of the abundant mines of America reduced in the six-
teenth century the value of gold and silver in Europe to about one
third of what it had been before. . . . Increase the scarcity of gold
to a certain degree, and the smallest bit may become more valuable
than a diamond.
Francis A. Walker, in his work " Money," says : —
Gold and silver do, over long periods, undergo great change of
value, and become in a high degree deceptive as a measure of the
obligations of the debtor for the claims of the creditor. Thus
Professor Jevons estimates that the value of gold fell, between 1789
and 1809, 46 per cent; that from 1809 to 1849 it rose 145 per cent;
while in the 20 years after 1849 it again fell at least 20 per cent.
Possibly the signification of the changing value of money,
and the ratio of value between the two precious metals,
does not depend upon the relative quantity of them in exist-
ence or being produced; in presenting a summary of the
production of them since 1492, I take the figures from
reports of the United States Treasury, except as to time
prior to 1492.
At the dawn of the Christian era, ancient civilization had
attained its zenith, and the world is estimated to have pos-
sessed $1,800,000,000, gold and silver money. During the
next 1,500 years but little of either metal was produced, and
in 1492 the amount had shrunk to about $180,000,000,
| gold and $ silver, with a ratio of value of 1 to 10.7, and so
scarce as to be unseen by the people.
In presenting the varying value of money, or price of
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A MONEY FAMINE. 418
property at different periods, I shall take the purchasing
power of a United States dollar — 23.22 grains fine gold —
in 1492 as standard to compare with, and assume the average
price of property to have been $1 per unit of property in
1492.
First period, 52 years (1492 to 1545). Product of gold,
$221,156,000 — 60.46 per cent. Silver, $144,660,000 —
39.54 per cent. Ratio of value between the metals in 1545,
1 to 11.17. Can find no reliable estimate of price of prop-
erty or value of money at this date. Stock of gold now
exceeds that of silver.
Second period, 175 years (1546 to 1720). Product of
gold, $1,050,559,000 — 28.52 per cent. Silver, $2,633,636,-
000 — 71.48 per cent. Ratio 1 to 15. Purchasing power
of 23.22 grains gold, according to Adam Smith, as compared
with 1492 standard value, $0.33$, or corresponding price of
property, $3 per unit.
Third period, 90 years (1721 to 1810). Product of gold,
$1,240,570,000 — 83.78. Silver, $2,431,430,000 — 66.22
per cent. Ratio, 1 to 15.5. According to Jevons, the pur-
chasing power of money fell 46 per cent during this period ;
therefore the purchasing power of 23.22 grains of gold
would, as compared with 1492 value, be $0.18 or the corre-
sponding price of property, $5.55 per unit of property.
Fourth period, 40 years (1811 to 1850). Product of
gold, $669,310,000 — 48.38 per cent. Silver, $998,370,000
— 51.62 per cent. Ratio, 1 to 15.5. Jevons says that
money appreciated in value during this period 14.5 per
cent, which would be equivalent to a fall in price of property
of 59 per cent, and would raise the purchasing power of
23.22 grains of gold, as compared with the 1492 standard,
to $0,411, or correspondingly reduce the price of property to
$2,275 per unit. The Spanish American revolutions during
this period arrested the supply of the precious metals from
that source, and at a time when property and business
were rapidly increasing from the impetus given by the
abundant supply during the preceding periods. The vol-
ume of money failing to increase in proportion to the increase
in volume of property and business, an enormous relative
contraction of money resulted. In 1850 the stock of silver
nearly doubled that of gold. Since 1816 the price of gold in
Great Britain has been fixed by act of Parliament requiring
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414 THE ARENA.
the Bank of England to purchase at a fixed sum all gold
presented. Therefore, since that time everything, includ-
ing silver bullion, is measured by this gold standard; con-
sequently any change in relative value of gold, and any-
thing else, will be indicated in the change of price of the
commodity. Now in 1850 the average price of silver
bullion in the London market was 61^ pence per ounce;
and for 1872 the price was 60^. pence per ounce in the
same market.
Fifth period, 22 years (1851 to 1872). Product of gold,
$2,984,257,000 — 74.1 per cent. Silver, $1,042,914,000 —
25.9 per cent. Ratio, 1 to 15.5, stock of the two metals
again nearly equal. The annual product of the two metals
for 1871 and 1872, immediately before demonetization of
silver, was of gold $113,413,000, and silver $81,849,000.
The product of gold continued in excess of silver until 1882.
In 1886 Soetbur published in the London Economist tables
of the average wholesale price of 100 articles most exten-
sively and commonly produced and used, as representative
of the prices of all commodities in the London market from
1849 to 1885, taking the average price of these articles
for the three years next preceding 1849, and calling it 1.00
for 1849. The tables show a steady rise to 1.3828 in 1873,
after which a steady decline to 1.0827 in 1885. The rise in
price of commodities of .3828 per cent was equivalent to a
fall in the purchasing power of money of .274 per cent, from
1849 to 1873; reducing the purchasing power of 23.22 grains
of gold, as compared with the 1492 standard, to $0.3119
and raising the price of property to $3,146 per unit.
Sixth period (1873 to 1892). Product of gold, $2,154,-
250,000 — 48 per cent. Silver, $2,343,000,000 — 52 per
cent. Ratio, 1 to 24. Soetbur's tables show a decline in
prices during this period of 22 per cent for the first 12 years
of it, which, continued at the same rate, would give a fall of
37 per cent for the 20 years, or a rise in the value of money
of 60 per cent, and raise the purchasing power of 23.22
grains of gold, as compared with the 1492 standard, to
$0,499, or reduce the price of property to $1,982 per unit.
In 1886 the New York Tribune published tables of the
average wholesale price of 200 most commonly used com-
modities in the New York markets from 1860 to 1885,
taking the average price of these articles during the three
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A MONEY FAMINE. 415
preceding years and calling that 1.00 for 1860. The tables
show a rise to 1.1981 gold in 1865, and to 1.2614 gold in
1866.
But in addition to the above, there was an actual con-
traction of the total volume of circulation in the country
which had helped to swell the prices of 1865-66. In addi-
tion to a very large amount of legal tenders — greenbacks —
which the government had issued, and paid out directly, as
money, to army, navy, civil employees, contractors, etc.,
there were issued interest-bearing notes, which circulated
popularly, and helped to swell the volume of circulating
medium.
During the few years succeeding 1865, these interest-
bearing notes were refunded into bonds of lower interest
rate. Also many of the greenbacks were withdrawn and
destroyed, so that altogether there was in the North and
West a contraction of the circulation of many hundred
millions, and of necessity a corresponding contraction of
prices of property in the New York market.
Again, the tables show the prompt response of prices to
the " Bland " silver restoration act of 1878. That act fail-
ing to be used as was intended and expected by the world,
prices soon dropped back upon the old, constantly declining
track. There can be scarcely a doubt that, had that law
been administered by an unbiased executive, the maximum
quantity of silver would have been coined, thereby creating
a demand greater than the supply of that time, which would
have raised the commodity price to the coinage value, and
thus restored the parity between the metals, at the ratio of
1 to 16. But that was exactly what the fundholders did
not want, and will not have, if they can prevent it.
That a constantly falling market for products must be dis-
astrous to producers and merchants, is too evident and well
known to justify me in asking space to prove. Then is it
not plain that the discarding of silver from use as money of
ultimate redemption has accomplished the wish of the money-
holders, by largely appreciating the value of the retained
metal; and that this appreciation of gold is the cause of the
fall in price of all property.
And in addition, the extremely practical fact should be
kept in mind that the smaller the volume of money of ulti-
mate redemption in existence, the more easy for manipuJators
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416 THE ABENA.
of the markets, by shipping abroad, or locking up a quantity,
to cause a withdrawal of usual credits, and thereby tempora-
rily force down the price of a commodity, at the period of its
marketing, or even to force the government to increase the
interest-bearing national debt, to avoid a panic. Even if
there were no other reasons for undoing the error of 1873,
this evil, now being exemplified by the present flood tide of
bankruptcy, would be ample cause for enlarging the volume
of real money beyond the easy reach of the confidence sharps
and bunco steerers of Wall and Threadneedle Streets.
England's superior financial wisdom is commended to us
for imitation. But it should be borne in mind that only
after she had become the great creditor of foreign people
and nations, did she favor a restricted volume and high-
priced money. Only after she had more money than her
restricted area and resources could find employment for did
she adopt the single gold standard, in the interest of her
money-loaning classes, and, as is demonstrated, to the great
detriment of her producinginterests.
Her foreign credits exceed ten billion dollars, and presum-
ably her foreign interest four hundred million, all of which
is augmented at least 50 per cent in value by the general
demonetization of silver, and would be correspondingly de-
preciated from its present value by a general restoration of
silver to money of ultimate redemption.
The people of the United States owe in foreign countries
nearly or quite as much, and are losers when England gains,
and gainers when England loses. England is the importer
of natural products, and the United States the exporter.
The natural resources of England are largely exhausted.
Those of the United States undeveloped.
John Bull is shrewd and selfish. Uncle Sam ignorant,
good-natured, and easily duped. Exhausted old England
may choose to deem her monetary credits her most important
interest. In the United States, the producing interests are
certainly of most importance. England may be wise in
allowing the money interest solely to dictate her financial
policy. In pursuing a like course, the United States has
been supremely foolish. England is the world's broker.
The United States should be the thrifty producer and
merchant.
But there may 'be other influences dictating England's
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A MONEY FAMINE. 417
opposition to the restoration of silver to money of ultimate
redemption. I quote from a pamphlet published in London
in 1885 entitled " The Silver Question ; or, The Sacrifice of
India." After detailing the great prosperity of India since
1873, the author says: —
Take care how you restore silver coinage, and bririg back our old
rival, the United States, iuto this trade. You are not only protect-
ing India, but you men of England are the principal beneficiaries.
You have increased our taxes threefold. You are making us sup-
port the India Army of the Queen. You have pensioned your other-
wise unprovided for sons upon us, as a legacy of the old East India
Company, and you are demanding all these tributes in gold, so that
while we have increased in prosperity, you are in fact getting the
lion's share.
Still further on this line, the London newspapers of
July 8, 1885, published an account of the proceedings of a
meeting of " The British and Colonial Chamber of Com-
merce," held the day before, from which I extract the
following : —
Sir Richard W. Fowler, M. P., the London banker and ex lord
mayor, said the effect of the depreciation of silver must ultimately
be the complete ruin of the agricultural export interests of the
United States, and the development of India as the chief wheat and
cotton exporter of the world.
Leaving the reader to judge, I think he will find that we
are justified in concluding that the malady affecting the
economic world results primarily and principally from the
destruction of a large part of the world's money, thereby
producing money famine.
Continuation of the cause must be followed by one of
two results: either the concentration of the wealth into a
few hands, with the masses reduced to abject dependence,
with lowered and constantly lowering standard of manhood
until a condition of docile villainage is reached ; or until —
whatis*nore likely, and almost certain under the ordinary
action of natural laws to occur — the enactment of a world-
wide drama, after the model of Shakespeare's " Merchant of
Venice." As the Shylock of fancy had his Antonio and his
Portia, so the Shylocks of this generation have had, and
apparently propose to indefinitely hold, their Antonios, the
producing masses, which can scarcely fail to develop and
bring upon the stage their Portias. No law is more clearly
established than that " One extreme begets its opposite."
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SEVEN FACTS ABOUT SILVER.
BY HON. W. H. STANDISH, ATTORNEY-GENERAL OP
NORTH DAKOTA.
I.
In view of the real or assumed ignorance of many public
men, newspapers, and members of boards of trade, it is sug-
gested that Mr. Bland remodel his act to substitute unlimited
silver poinage, in the place of the existing Sherman Coinage
Bill, in order that it will be so specific and explanatory as to
prevent those interested in usury from deceiving the people
by false representations as to what unlimited coinage really
means.
There was never such a thing in this country as the
coining of silver free of charge for bullion owners, and no
such thing has ever been proposed; therefore the term "free
silver coinage " is a misleading one, and we should substi-
tute for it the words " unlimited coinage without purchase
for one-tenth toll as pay for the work and government
stamp," to remove this misapprehension.
The law of unlimited silver coinage that prevailed with
us until February, 1873, permitted any bullion owner to
bring 412} grains of bar, or pure silver, to any government
mint, and tender it to the officer in charge, who cut off
41} grains, and put it in the government hopper as the
government's toll. To the 371} grains of pure silver re-
maining, the government would add a mixture of 41} grains
called alloy.
Alloy is not a metal, but a mixture of metals, and might
be part copper and part glass. It is combined with both silver
and gold bullion to harden and make it of the proper con-
sistency to wear as money. This alloy is very inexpensive;
and the difference between its value and that of the pure
silver bullion it displaces in a dollar, is the government's
pay for minting the dollar; hence comes the expression,
"A silver dollar contains 371} grains of pure silver, or
412} grains -& fine." In the -& fine -^ of silver has been
418
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SEVEN FACTS ABOUT SILVER. 419
taken out by this minting process, and the cheap combined
substance called alloy, substituted in its place.
II.
If we should repeal the Sherman Bill substituting Mr.
Bland's Unlimited Coinage Act in its place, and issue a
coin certificate to the man who brings 41 2£ grains of pure
silver to the mint, and all the silver money of the world
should be melted down into bullion and brought to our
mints for free coinage, none of it would be pure silver.
Under a bill properly drawn, none of it would be admissible,
and the holders would have to take it away and extract
the 10 per cent of alloy in it; then when they brought
it back again, after being separated and purified, 10 per cent
more would be taken out of it by our government, as toll
for mintage. All the silver money of Europe is now
either full or limited legal tender in the payment of all
private and public debts, although it cannot be had in those
countries at the bullion price of bar silver, but costs its
face value in gold, as will be seen by the following letter
from the secretary of our mint.
Treasury Department, >
Washington, D. C, March ID, 1892. J
W. H. Standish, Lakota, North Dakota, —
Sir: In reply to your letter of the 4th hist., I send you herewith
a copy of the testimony of the director of the mint before the
Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures of the Fifty-first
Congress, in which you will find the information you desired as to
the amounts of limited legal-tender silver in the various countries.
In England it is legal tender only to the amount of £2; in Germany of
20 marks, or about $5; in Italy, France, Spain, etc., it is unlimited
legal tender, as also in Switzerland, Greece, and Belgium.
There is no discount in these countries on the legal-tender silver
at the banks. Kespectfully yours,
K. E. Preston, Acting Director of the Mint
This letter has been given publication heretofore. All
our silver money was limited legal tender from 1874 to 1878.
It was not as good money as is the limited legal . tender
of England, which pays a debt of £2, or near $10, and no
better than silver money is now in Germany. Since this
letter was written, we have never found a German or an
Englishman just over, or recently visiting his old home, who
could recall an instance where he had been obliged to pay a
discount in those countries in using his silver money there.
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420 THE ABENA.
We know that in our country, from 1874 to 1878, all our
silver money which had been coined prior to 1873 floated at
par up to 1878, although excluded by law from, paying a
debt of over $5 ; and yet at the same time a trade dollar, con-
taining 420 grains, could be had for 85 cents because it had
no legal-tender capacity. We desire to remind congressmen
that there is no perceptible discount on even the limited
legal-tender money of Europe, and they should satisfy them-
selves of this by taking the proof, and not rely on the gold
trust that runs our Treasury Department, the Associated
Press despatches, and the metropolitan press of both the
old parties.
All the silver coinage of Europe, whether limited or
unlimited legal tender, contains 3 per cent less of silver and
3 per cent less of weight than our silver dollars, or those
that will be made under the proposed Bland Bill, as the
European ratio of coinage to gold while they made silver
money was as 15 J to 1 ; while ours has been, and will be, in
the ratio of 16 to 1. So that while their mints were in
operation, the world's production largely went to them for
coinage, because the same bullion which they would tender
to our mint and have coined into $31, if tendered to the
European mint, made $32 ; the mintage added to the cir-
culation of money in Europe, and thus aided us to obtain
better prices there, and thereby benefited us just as much as
if the mintage had been here.
We are told that unlimited silver coinage will cause the
silver money of other countries to be melted down into bul-
lion and sent here for free coinage, thereby causing our
government to lose several hundred millions of dollars.
The total silver money of the world is approximately
$3,700,000,000; we have $500,000,000 of this, leaving
$3,200,000,000 in other countries. This $3,200,000,000 is
money that has been coined in these countries, and by their
laws has been made legal tender for the payment of all public
and private debts there. ' It therefore has a debt-paying
value equal to its face value, and will cost its face value in
gold, as shown by our preceding remarks and the above
letter from our secretary of the mint. The assumption,
then, that it could be purchased in gold at what would be
its value in bullion if it had not been coined and made a
legal tender, must be discarded.
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SEVEN FACTS ABOUT SILVER. 421
This being the case, what profits would foreigners and
speculators make in buying in the coined silver money of
other countries to have it re-coiped by us ? First, they would
pay its face value to get it; secondly, they would lose 3 per
cent in weight, the coined dollars there being smaller than
ours ; thirdly, by reason of the use of coined money there,
it has worn away since it was coined not less than 3 per
cent, which would be another loss in weight; fourthly, under
a properly drawn mintage bill they would have to present to
us pure bullion, such as we get in the bar from the mine.
To do this they would have to get the alloy; that is, the
10 per cent alloy which was put into it before coinage,
extracted from their bullion after it was melted down. This
extraction would cause a loss of 10 per cent in weight;
the cost of the extraction would probably be at least half
the cost of mintage, which would make another 5 per cent
to begin with before ever reaching our mint, which would
charge 10 per cent of the bullion as toll for re-coinage.
This would be made an outlay of 30 per cent for buying
in foreign silver to be re-coined here, which would involve
to the speculator or foreigner who attempted it, a loss of
$960,000,000.
And what would these foreigners and speculators receive ?
Two billion two hundred and forty million dollars of coin
certificates, which they would circulate as money as we circu-
late our silver notes. If they preferred the coin, they would
present their certificates to the treasurer and get the silver
dollars that had been re-coined out of this silver money, at a
loss of 30 per cent; and in one case out of six they would get
gold, as | of our coin would be silver and the balance gold.
Our toll gain for the re-coinage, less expense of mintage,
produces $266,666,666.66 as the government's profit in help-
ing these foreigners to lose $960,000,000 in trying to swamp
us with their silver. The re-coinage would leave the same
volume of coined money in the world as now exists, less the
6 per cent loss in weight by lighter coinage in future and
by the wear of money now in use.
III.
It is next said that we cannot live commercially unless we
adopt such laws on money as the creditor nations of Western
Europe choose to dictate to us. Who are these nations, and
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422 THE ARENA.
•
what is their condition, that we need to bow before them ?
They are and always will be hungry and naked, except as
the debtor nations shall supply their needs. Nations can
exist without other nations to make their money or their
money laws, but not without food or clothing. When these
are lacking they must buy of the nations that have both, as
all went to Joseph in the time of famine.
If an army was in a walled city and had a full supply of
money, but not enough of food and clothing, it would soon
succumb; but if it was provided with ample food and cloth-
ing, with no money at all, it could hold out indefinitely.
That is the comparative condition between the creditor
nations of Europe and those nations that are debtors to
Western Europe, and yet hold to silver money. These silver
nations cover every portion of the globe that produces a sur-
plus of food and the raw material for clothing ; and every
nation except our own which has outlawed silver requires
food and clothing, and for all time to come will have to
make pilgrimages to the silver countries, for the essentials,
as the children of Jacob had to carry money to Joseph for
corn.
If the United States reinstates silver and throws open the
mints to unlimited coinage, it, being a silver and a producing
nation, will in a measure dictate to buyers the prices which
they must pay for the food and clothing to maintain their
existence. Otherwise they will dictate prices to us, mak-
ing us their serfs and slaves, and keeping us forever in debt,
to maintain a few lords in Western Europe, New England,
New York, and Pennsylvania in idleness and opulence ; add-
ing to the wealth of the one half of one per cent of our popu-
lation who already have one half of all the wealth in this
country, and entailing upon the larger portion of the other
99J per cent a condition of serfdom and pauperism.
IV.
Only -fa of our business is with foreign nations ; the rest is
internal consumption and trade. Europe produces nothing
essential to our existence; she has no mines; she has noth-
ing more to develop than what is in operation there. In
all the other silver countries of the globe, she is our com-
petitor for trade. If we restore unlimited silver coinage,
all these other silver countries can iaterchange with us with-
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SEVEN FACTS ABOUT SILVER. 423
out suffering a discount on their money; they will be driven
out of the European market to us for everything we manu-
facture, and will bring to us a great remunerative trade.
The money in Europe will be idle ; her citizens, with
nothing to do, will be compelled to starve, unless main-
tained by government charity ; those lords who conceived
this conspiracy will soon be forced to recognize silver as
a suitable metal for coinage on the same terms that
are extended to gold. This, too, will be in accordance
with the principles of our government; it will be legislation
in the interests of the masses, and protective of American
productions and of American debtors against the unjust
exactions of eastern and foreign greed.
In reaching for foreign trade, a north and south line rail-
road on the east side of the Andes will open to us, by a short
route, lines of steamers to run from some port in the Ca-
ribbean Sea to Galveston, New Orleans, Mobile, Savannah,
Charleston, Norfolk, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and
Boston. This direct, rapid transit and use of silver money
like that of South America, will soon drive England to the
wall. Our factories in the East will multiply and add to
their operative force, to supply this market, and soon — only
5 per cent of what we produce, being needed for home con-
sumption — all Europe will be at our door, if we do not
carry our products there, to buy all the wheat and meat we
now export, to keep her people, who will consume no less
than now, from starving. Prices will advance, our mort-
gages soon become liquidated, Europe paid off, and we shall
no longer be sending to Europe annually for interest nearly
as much as the total yearly coinage of the world ; our masses,
instead of being tenants, will be owners of their homes; and
the eastern investor, instead of being compelled to take
western and southern lands, will have his principal and
interest returned to him in money just as valuable as that
which he loaned; money that will buy just as much land,
food, clothing, or other property as the money the eastern
investor loaned.
The advocate of unlimited silver coinage is not a repudi-
ator; it is the other party which is essentially dishonest. By
the change of the coinage laws the investor class have corn-
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424 THE ARENA.
pelled the debtor class to pay in value over 30 per cent more
than they would otherwise have been required to pay. In
1873 and 1874 this repudiating class of the East who talk so
much about an honest dollar, changed the contract of every
bond, note, and mortgage, public and private, in the United
States. Every such contract had been written and signed,
payable in silver only if the debtor should so elect; and with-
out the knowledge of the debtor, John Sherman and his
confederates, through a law surreptitiously enacted, blotted
this silver clause out of every existing obligation calling for
over $5.
VI.
An ounce of silver bullion will buy as much wheat, beef,
or any other species of property, " except gold," as it would
in 1873 or at any time since then; but by reason of the
outlawry practised against it in 1873, and the refusal to
restore it to the right of unlimited coinage on shares for
« a tenth toll to the government for minting, that existed until
1§73, and always kept the bullion at par, the demand for
the bullion has lessened, and it has fallen in price as com-
pared to gold. But its intrinsic value is exactly the same
as it lias always been ; the character and virtue of the metal
has not changed. The original demand for the metal can-
not be restored except by giving to it its original minting
privilege, which is all that is asked by the advocates of the
Bland Bill.
Neither metal, gold, nor silver is intrinsically money, or
possessed of any debt-paying power until laws are made
authorizing its coinage and making the coinage a legal
tender to discharge debts; and until such laws are made,
neither can be coined or used in payment of a debt; it there-
fore follows that neither gold nor silver can be made into
money except in a government mill, under regulations to be
prescribed by law.
In order to illustrate the position that has been forced
upon us by the repudiating class, let us assume that the
whole bread demand of the world was being met by the two
crops, spring wheat and winter wheat, as is the coinage
supply of the world by the two metals, gold and silver;
that the yearly production of each and the stock on hand
of each crop was approximately the same, but neither crop
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SEVEN FACTS ABOUT SILVER. 425
could be utilized for food until it should be taken to a gov-
ernment mill and ground into flour for a toll charge; that
no one but the government could build the mill or operate
it; that a band of speculators should meet and plan to
destroy winter wheat and the value of all. winter wheat
farms^ just as the creditor class of our country and the
creditor class of Western Europe met in Europe in 1867, and
conspired to destroy silver by agreeing to secure legislation
there and here which would stop the minting of silver.
In pursuance of such conspiracy, they send out their
agents and purchase up all the spring wheat, and at the
same time arrange that in the near future all the govern-
ment mills that grind winter wheat shall be closed. Having
accomplished the purchase, they can double the price. If
the purchase had not been made, the spring wheat would
double from natural causes by reason of the winter wheat
being outlawed from use; and while the spring wheat would
double in price, the winter wheat could not be sold. If you
would restore the milling right to grind up one half the
winter wheat, the winter wheat might rise in price to one
half its value, and the price of spring wheat would sink
accordingly; but the day that you would restore full milling
privileges to both crops, that day, from natural causes, and
without any labor or effort, both crops would resume their
old comparative standards of price in the markets of the
world; and after that had been done, the flour from the
winter wheat would perform the same honest functions in
appeasing hunger as would spring wheat flour, and it
would be quite as honest flour; the restoration of milling
privileges to the winter wheat crop and to the winter wheat
farm, would only be an act of simple justice; so it is with
the bullion and mine owner of silver. The restoration
of unlimited coinage to silver will be to the silver mine
owner and the silver bullion owner an act of simple justice
to correct a wrong that now prevails; it will in future
lessen the value of money the same as the restoration
of the milling right to both kinds of wheat in the above
supposed case would lessen the price of flour to the public,
and thereby cut off an unjust extortion which the conspira-
tors had been obtaining from the public.
This and nothing more is the "awful wrong" the
unlimited silver coinage men are seeking to perpetrate in
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426" THE ARENA.
asking for the restoration of the government minting privi-
lege for silver that prevailed until 1873, when the repudi-
ation creditor class had a law passed to shut down the
government minting mill.
VII.
A financial crash can come from one of two causes and not
otherwise; and where either of these exists, the govern-
ment can give no relief except by enacting legislation that
will relieve or remove the cause that is about to produce the
crash. These two causes are over-investment and specu-
lation or undue contraction. At this time money is said to
be worth in New York City, at the banks, 60 per cent on
call. The refusal of unlimited coinage has deprived the
world of money necessary to meet double or treble the
indebtedness that existed forty years ago, when there was
coined annually nearly twice the amount of gold coined
now, besides the silver, and both metals were a standard
of money.
In addition to this, to the observing and reflective, it is
known that there is a conspiracy on hand which, unless
conquered, will succeed, having for its object, not only the
stopping of all silver coinage in future, but the destruc-
tion of all silver money now in existence throughout the
civilized world; that in the consummation of this project
thousands of our best business men, farmers, and property
owners must go to the wall.
It is known to the public that it is the purpose of this
administration to repeal the Sherman Bill without substitute
ing any silver coinage law in its place. It is further
known that an attempt was made during the past winter to
have the silver bullion in our treasury, which is the basis of
$150,000,000 of silver notes that are in circulation and
perform all the offices of a greenback, sold, and this sum of
$150,000,000 thereby wiped out of existence as money.
It is further intimated, in an interview with Senator Sher-
man which has been published at large, that it would cause
a loss of only $8,000,000 to replace $350,000,000 of coined
silver money that we have with gold, and that it might be
well to consider the propriety of doing it. While the
multitude do not understand this, thinking and reflective
people know that it means the retiring of all our silver
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SEVEN FACTS ABOUT SILVER. 427
money, $500,000,000 in amount; ^ of the total silver
coinage of the entire world is to be retired from circulation,
which will have the same effect upon business as it would to
retire that much gold, since it performs the same functions as
gold. They have seen and now daily witness our adminis-
tration using gold to pay our silver certificates, and all
other coin obligations, government bonds, and greenbacks,
that are payable with any of this 1500,000,000 they are
seeking to destroy. We are told that the administration is
making use of official patronage to bribe the votes of senators
and congressmen in favor of the repeal of the Sherman Bill,
without any substituted coinage law in its place, and that
in his effort to stop all silver coinage the president is
inexorable.
This means a contraction in our coinage hereafter of
$54,000,000 yearly, as that is the amount of silver money
we are annually making under the Sherman Bill; the
balance of the plot is to wipe out all our silver money after
the Sherman Bill shall have been repealed. The effect
that will arise from such contraction was portrayed by
Senator Sherman in a speech in the Senate in 1869, before
he had become the property of this conspiracy, in which he
said : —
" The contraction of the currency is a far more distressing
operation than senators suppose. Our own and other nations
have gone through that operation before. It is not possible to
take that voyage without the sorest distress. To every person,
except a capitalist out of debt, or a salaried officer, or annui-
tant, it is a period of loss, danger, lassitude of trade, fall of
wages, suspension of enterprise, bankruptcy, and disaster. It
means the ruin of all dealers whose debts are twice their
business capital, though one third less than their actual
property. It means the fall of all agricultural productions,
without any great reduction of taxes. What prudent man
would dare to build a house, a railroad, a factory, or a barn
with this certain fact before him ? "
This threatened contraction of doing away with the
dishonest silver (?) dollars and dishonest (?) silver cer-
tificates that float at par, added to the proposed reduction
of coinage $54,000,000 annually, will reduce all of our
legal-tender money to less than two thirds of what it is
now, and it is not surprising that the impending danger of
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428 THE ARENA.
this being done has destroyed all confidence ; and if it shall be
done, a financial wreck complete and universal mill imme-
diately follow.
When rivers are dry, they cannot, be replenished without
rain; a hungry man cannot exist on confidence without food.
Contraction reduces prices; without prices the farmer cannot
obtain for his crops the necessary amount to pay his debts.
Then every business dependent on him fails to meet
its obligations; then mercha$ts, banks, and every business
enterprise, reaching to the farthest commercial centre, go
down in one common crash. To repeal the Sherman law
will precipitate this crash; to permit unlimited coinage will
restore confidence, increase our money circulation, raise prices,
start business, and avert impending disaster.
When any great conspiracy or crisis is thrown upon a
nation, the people are unwilling to realize it, although the
proofs of its existence may be clear, positive, and over-
whelming. Those favoring it are enabled to baffle and
prevent effective resistance by the people, who would crush
it and prevent any material injury resulting from it. The
conspirators deceive the people by diverting attention and
by raising hopes that the conspiracy can be won over by
negotiation, and does not need to be crushed out. But when
a premeditated plot exists like that which was arranged in
Europe in 1867 between the agents of the creditor classes
of the creditor nations of Europe, and an agent from this
country of the creditor classes of this country, that they
should labor to secure legislation to stop the minting of
silver, and when they proceeded to obtain that legislation in
this country and in Europe for the purpose of doubling their
bonds and notes and reducing the price of property ', it has
gone too far for any sane man to think of negotiating it out of
existence by a treaty to be made with the conspirators ; had
Congress promptly met in 1874, and restored unlimited coin-
age by re-enactment of the law repealed in 1873, the conspir-
ators would have been crushed before they had obtained any
benefits from the conspiracy. This conspiracy to destroy silver
as money cannot be negotiated out of existence by a treaty, but
must be destroyed by adverse legislation by us, restoring un-
limited silver coinage on the same ratio as existed until 1873,
and making silver a legal tender for all debts public and pri-
vate without any exception clause, as heretofore, authorizing the
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SEVEN PACTS ABOUT SILVER. 429
making of special gold contracts. We must crush this mon-
ster or be crushed by it. Legislation must crush it, or certain
disaster awaits us.
There are few members of this Congress who desire to see
our silver coinage entirely destroyed for all time to come.
The seductive siren plea will be made to our senators and
representatives to vote for the unconditional repeal of the
Sherman silver act, and thereby restore confidence, save our
banks, and prevent business failures. This will tend to pro-
duce contraction and leave us without any silver coinage
law, so that we can no longer make money out of silver
until we shall secure new legislation. To procure new legis-
lation we must obtain the two-thirds majority, not only
in one, but both Houses of Congress, as it will have to
be passed over the president's veto, and no such law can be
passed during his term, which will last for nearly four years;
during that time the money, power, and influence of the
conspirators will secure the destruction of all the silver
money and stop all silver coinage throughout the world ;
our debtor people will be bankrupted, foreclosed, and their
equity of redemption will have expired, when the proper
legislation will be of no avail or relief to them.
If unlimited silver coinage is ever to be restored, it should
be done now, and as a condition of the repeal of the Sherman
law; and if not so restored, the Sherman law should be
retained until unlimited silver coinage is made lawful.
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AN INQUIBY INTO THE LAWS OF CURE.
BY M. W. VAN DENBURG, A. M., M. D.
While it may be true, as Comte has declared, that some
kind of theory is necessary to the most advantageous study
of facts, — to serve as a thread upon which to string the
scattered pearls of observation, it is still further true that the
color, texture, and size of the thread are not of the greatest
consequence. The facts are vastly more important.
It has so happened in the evolution of medicine, as we
find it to-day, that the thread of theory has too often been
taken as the prime factor; and all facts that did not har-
monize in size, color, and caliber, instead of being taken at
their natural value, have been ground and artificially colored
to fit and harmonize with the thread of a preconceived theory,
or, when this could not be done, have been rejected altogether
as of little account. It is a very easy matter to predict the
results of such a course in any line of inquiry into natural
causes.*
From the time when Pythagoras promulgated the theory
that all the members were composed of fire, air, earth, and
water, and that disease was some inscrutable change in the
proper proportions of these constituents in some local part;
to the Hippocratic theory of pores and their occlusion in
disease, or the pneumatic theory of Athenseus, followed by
the Paracelsian theory that mercury, salt, and sulphur were
the three fundamentals of health, which remained as long as
these three were combined in one; "but when anyone of
them became arrogant, and separated itself from the others,
disease resulted," — this being the fashionable theory of the
sixteenth century, — the chemical theory ousting it in the
early seventeenth, to be in turn dethroned by the theory of
the friction of the blood on the blood vessels, causing most
of the phenomena of health and disease, in the late seven-
teenth, — after which the ethical-soul theory was made to
• I am indebted to " Therapeutic Methods," by Dr. J. V, Drake, for the facts of
which this paragraph is a very imperfect summary.
430
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THE LAWS OF CURE. 431
explain sickness and health, for a good part of the eighteenth,
until the theory of sthenic, asthenic, and indirectly asthenic
diseases and drugs, in the early nineteenth gained the
mastery, to give way to the latest microbean craze in this
final decade of the nineteenth century, — through all this
history of medicine, covering the incredible period of twenty-
five centuries, all has been theory, theory, theory.
The physician, unwilling to come to great nature in a
humble, teachable spirit, has ever approached her with a self-
evolved theory, by which alone he was willing to explain
her workings, and, as' happens to all wisdom that is wise
in its own conceit, has gone away fooled and misled by the
phantasms of his own imagination. This, no doubt, sounds
like a very bitter arraignment, especially when coming from
a physician; but the most distressing part is, that it is the
calm truth.
44 The business of the physician is to heal the sick by the
shortest, safest, and surest method possible." When he has
done this, he has fulfilled one part of his mission; the remain-
ing, and in many respects the most important part is, to so
comprehend and teach the laws of health that there shall be
the least possible amount of sickness. In this the two call-
ings of the physician are directly -at war with each other.
When, however, scientific skill shall be appreciated at its real
value, it will be for keeping the well in health the medical
man will receive most his fees, and not for healing the- sick.
Biology, however, is not therapeutics, as many seem to
think, but is indirectly connected with healing the sick.
When the laws of biology have full play, health is the result;
it is only in abnormal states that therapeutics is of value.
Since these two conditions have to be constantly differen-
tiated in treating the sick, it is of the first importance, even
from the therapeutic standpoint, that the physician should
fully understand the scope and laws of biology, that he may
not mistake health for disease, or disease for health. For
the present purpose, the merest outline will suffice, being
only an enumeration of the fundamental requirements of
biology.
These are a proper organism for the manifestation of
the phenomena of life; and for its continuance, food and
moisture, light and heat, a respiratory medium for the sup-
ply of oxygen to the tissues, exercise and rest, and the
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432 THE ARENA.
reproduction of the species. If any one of those require-
ments were denied, life, as we know it, would soon disappear
from the earth. With regard to man, two more functions
must be added, as essential to his existence — intellectual
development, by which he intelligently adapts himself to his
surroundings, and moral development, by which he adapts
himself to his social relations. It is evident that these
attainments are not the exclusive possession of man, since
intelligence is shared largely by animals, while some sort of
common morality necessarily governs all social animals.
One broad word covers the whole ground, and that is
" environment." Man's relations to his environment have
been a fruitful source of speculation and theorizing in all
ages and among all conditions of the human race. It has
remained for the last quarter of the nineteenth century to
raise the whole matter, as far as the civilized world is con-
cerned, from the realm of the contingent and theoretical, and
place it on the broad plane of universal law.
When, during the present generation, the Duke of Argyle
issued his great work " The Reign of Law," the title fell
harshly on the ears of the champions of two orthodox
sciences — orthodox theology and orthodox medicine. The
one was committed to the doctrine of special providence,
the other to special theories. But special providence has
become gradually modified into a general providence, that
works by fixed and universal laws. Thus has theology
accommodated itself to its environment. As a token of
this, witness a late article in The Arena entitled " The
Universal Reign of Law." A few years since, such an
article would have called out a host of objectors and raised a
storm of opposition ; now it excites not a ripple of dissent.
Those who would oppose it are judiciously silent, for they
know that right reason and the logic of facts are against
them.
What, in the meantime, has " orthodox medicine " done to
adjust itself to its environment? Older by centuries than
the oldest theology living, whether Jewish or pagan, with
all the experience of the past and impulse of the present at
its command, what is the position of orthodox medicine
to-day?
Let us observe a few straws on the current of medical
thought in this the last decade of the nineteeenth century.
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THE LAWS OF CUBS. 423
It would have been easy to select utterances from more
authoritative sources; but so long as these stand unchal-
lenged by representative bodies, and on the pages of repre-
sentative medical journals, it is fair to infer that they are
the views indorsed by the self-styled " regular inheritors " of
historical medicine.
At a late meeting of the Philadelphia County Medical
Society, Dr. Griffith, presumably a member, is reported to
have spoken as follows : —
I would like to inquire how many drugs in the pharmacopoeia
really cure; certainly very few. As educated physicians, we hesitate
to say we have cured our patients. All we expect to do is to guide
our cases to recovery. I have no reference in this connection to
surgical interference. — The Practitioners' Monthly, April, 1892,
p. 57.
From this expression of opinion there is no reported
dissent; and we are forced to infer that the branch of
medical practice that maims and ablates parts and organs,
performs some undoubted cures; but drug interference is of
very doubtful efficacy at best.
Professor Nothnagal, M. D., of Vienna, is reported as
saying, at a representative meeting of naturalists and
physicians, in an address before that body : —
The therapeutic potentiality of the physician's art is its most
ancient possession, grossly overapplied through the centuries, then
abruptly abandoned in part, and now wavering in uncertainty. —
Popular Science Monthly, May, 1892, p. 78.
It will be observed that no hint is here given of any law
or laws for the use of therapeutic means, by which drugs
are presumably implied. On the contrary, we are led to
infer that no such laws are known to exist, else how can
therapeutics of disease still be " wavering in uncertainty " as
to its real value ?
This last decade of the nineteenth century affirms that
law reigns supreme, without the smallest exception to its
omnipotent fiat, in ethics, as in chemistry; in political
economy, as in mathematics ; in art, as in gravitation.
Can it be that the administration of drugs, with the con-
sequent benefits arising therefrom, is not in accordance with
universal law ? Are the failures to cure anything less than
failures to comply with the requirements of this same
inexorable fact, the supreme fact of the universe ?
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434 THE AEENA.
Is there any other so-called learned profession that does
not fully acknowledge the supremacy of law? Why is
drug-giving still held "wavering in uncertainty" by its
most ardent devotees, unless it be that they are allying
themselves against universal law? Why is medicine lag-
ging so far behind all other branches of research, in "its
most ancient possession ? " To the solution of the problem
of the relation of drugs to the curing of disease, the same
general method applies that is used in the discovery of
any natural law in any department of research. Spencer's
enunciation of the universal formula of procedure is un-
equalled for clearness and brevity : " Though we can never
learn the ultimate nature of things, we are learning more
and more their order of manifestation; and this order of
manifestation we call law"
With the ultimate nature of disease, as therapeutists, we
need concern ourselves very little, for we can never fully
solve the mystery; in the ultimate nature of drugs we have,
for a similar reason, only a secondary interest; the same is
true of the ultimate nature of cure. But with the order of
manifestation we are greatly concerned, as therapeutists,
for in this lies the law of cure. Applying this general
formula of procedure, how much of the pseudo-medical
wisdom of to-day would fall among the chips, if once the axe
of severe scientific work were made to hew to the line ?
It seems scarcely possible there should still be an educated
person who, in the light of modern discoveries and investi-
gations, can, in a serious frame of mind, dissent from the
view that all the phenomena of the universe are subject to a
fixed sequence, to inexorable Law. When, therefore, a cure
has been wrought, it has, in all probability, been accomplished
in strict accordance .with law, and is a part of an invariable
chain of sequences. When all the antecedents are well
determined the consequents in any part of the chain may con-
fidently be foretold. When we have learned all the antece-
dents of any case of cure, and have compared a number of
similar cases, we shall be able to formulate the order of
manifestation, the law of cure.
In the presence of nature, one law cannot be said to be
superior to another. All are on a footing of equality. The
only claim of superiority that can be successfully main-
tained is, where one law is more available for practical pur-
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THE LAWS OF CUBE. 435
poses than another, more readily and surely applied. When,
therefore, it can be shown that there are less chances of
going wrong in things doubtful, and more chances of going
right in things essential, then that method or law of cure
most certainly ought to commend itself to every right-
reasoning, candid mind.
It is taken for granted, in the following discussion, that
every homoeopath who reads will allow that some cures are
made by other means than the single remedy, the poten-
tiated drug, and the minimum dose; in the same way, that
every allopath will allow that the potentiated dose of the
similar remedy does occasionally cure. In event of either
being unable to allow thus much to the other, the following
discussion will be of little interest.
For convenience of treatment, though not from the
logical standpoint, the laws of cure here discussed will be
divided into two groups : First, non-drug cures ; second,
drug cures.
The almost complete unanimity of all schools in regard to
the first, and the wide diversity regarding the second group,
are sufficient reasons for the arrangement proposed.
In the first group fall naturally : —
1. The tendency of all living organisms to return to the
normal, when for any reason they have been brought into an
abnormal state* This fact has not inaptly been expressed by
the phrase, Vis medicatrix naturae (nature's healing force).
2. Hygienic methods of cure, partially expressed by Tolle
causa* (morbi) f remove the causes of disease).
8. Mental ana moral methods of cure.
4. The mechanical, known as the surgical methods of cure.
In the second group fall : —
1. The drug mechanical, partially expressed by Tolle
causa*.
2. The derivative method, often expressed by Contraria
contrariis curantur (diseases are cured by drugs that have an
opposite effect upon the system to those effects manifested
by the disease).
8. The method of similars, expressed also by Similia
stmilibus curantur (diseases are cured by drugs having a
similar effect upon the system to those effects manifested by
the disease).
To avoid confusion, it may be well to begin with defining
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486 THE ABENA.
"cure," as here employed. Cure is the bringing of the
organism from an abnormal state to the normal, by any vol-
untarily employed means. It will at once be seen that there
are various degrees of cure, especially as regards permanency;
but any method that modifies the virulence of an attack of
disease, or in any way lessens the danger to life, or for the
present restores to health, may justly be called curative. In
so far as it brings about a normal state of the organism,
whether permanent or temporary, in the same degree is it
desirable and useful.
NON-DRUG METHODS.
Vis Medicatrix Natura.
There is in every vital organism a well-recognized ten-
dency to return to the normal, when from any circumstance
it has been brought into an abnormal condition. It matters
not whether it be abnormality of function or tissue, the whole
force of the organism is bent towards repair, towards res-
toration of the integrity of the structure. If one member
suffers, all suffer with it. Were it otherwise, life would soon
cease to exist on the earth, since no organic form is free for
a moment from the influence of forces which seek to destroy
its integrity.
In tins veritable struggle for existence the organic form is
often wounded, but not unto death; for it repairs the injury
by virtue of this inherent tendency. Those organisms that
possess this tendency in only a slight degree less than their
fellows, are by just so much the sooner doomed to destruction
— are weeded out by the ruthless law of natural selection.
Evolution, proceeding along these two relentless lines of
attack and resistance, has produced in every organism a more
or less forceful tendency to heal its mishaps, and cure itself
of its diseases.
It is this great fact underlying all forms of life, and shared
by man as the highest general exponent of terrestrial life,
that gives us, as physicians, the warrant of both nature and
reason to practise the healing art. We do not cure in the
sense of actively healing, when brought to the last analysis ;
but we promote cures by assisting nature to regain control,
or we remove mechanical hindrances, or repair mechanical
defects.
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THE LAWS OF CURB. 437
In many cases nature, nnaided by the skill of the physician
or surgeon, works cures of her own. She destroys appetite,
and thereby gives the overtaxed digestive system time to
repair wasted tissues and to regain nerve force; she sloughs
off dead tissues and crushed members; she refuses further
support to an overtaxed brain, and in the enforced leisure
builds up the exhausted structures; she promotes secretions
or excretions to an excessive degree, and thereby relieves
congested organs, and continues necessary processes and
functions. But while nature, unassisted, does much, intelli-
gently applied forces, that form no part of the organism, may
also do much toward the restoration and repair of the abnor-
malities of tissue, or function. Sometimes, nay often, these
extraneous forces make all the difference between recovery
and death. Nature unassisted, is unable to cope with
destructive tendencies that invade the body and threaten
life; but seconded by an intelligent and skilful ally, she
sooner or later regains control, and life is prolonged. Thera-
peutics and surgery are co-workers with nature, and not,
as some seem to think, independent warriors against disease
and accident. All methods of cure by forces that form no
part of the organism have certain definite relations to the
above enumerated fundamental requirements of life.
The first group above proposed, embraces the natural re-
quirements and natural stimuli of the organism ; the second
group embraces stimuli and forces foreign to the system when
in health.
Hygienic Methods of Cure.
The first law of hygiene requires that all inimical forces
and influences shall, as far as possible, be removed from
affecting the organism. This includes the sanitation of
man's habitations as far as morbific germs are concerned, as
regards the dwelling, the climate and the location as related
to malarias or other deleterious germs. It also includes the
separation and strict quarantine of all communicable diseases,
and the destruction, as far as possible, of all such disease
germs.
The second law of hygiene requires a proper supply of the
normal stimuli of the living organism, to the end that it may
manifest the normal functions for which its destiny has
shaped it.
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438 THE ARENA.
The vital fact on which this law depends is that an over-
supply or an under-supply of these stimuli tends inevitably
to disease, to abnormality. Food or drink in too great or
too small a degree to meet the normal requirements; too
much or too little light and heat; an over or under supply
of oxygen in the respiratory medium; too much sleep, rest,
and quiet; too much exercise and exertion, whether too vio-
lent, or too long continued; too great or too little activity
of the sexual functions; an over or an under cultivation, or
stimulation of the intellectual faculties; an over or under
development of the moral emotions and sensibilities ; — each
and every one of these departures from the normal require-
ments of the organism tends to produce abnormality of
function, and frequently abnormality of organic structure.
This great fact, still but imperfectly appreciated, accounts
for the largest part of the ills of modern civilization.
Abstemious in none, temperate in all, is nature's law in
these respects.
It may be worthy of remark, in passing, that while the
limit in individual cases varies greatly, so does it in a less
degree allow of variation in the case of the individual
himself. But the limits of this variation are fairly well
defined, and cannot be transgressed with impunity to the
organism. All the requirements of the organism are subject
to fixed sequences, to natural laws, which are capable of
clear and definite expression. Furthermore, in restoring the
diseased organism to a normal state, every one of these
requirements must be met in a manner suitable to the
individual case, if we would reach the highest possible cure,
the most completely normal state the organism is capable of
attaining.
Since it has become established, that capricious circum-
stances no longer govern the proper amount of these natural
stimuli, it is unnecessary, for the purposes of this paper, to
enter into a detailed statement of the laws, governing each
class. In no department has medical science made greater
advancement in the last score of years than in a definite
expression of these laws. All schools of practice are at one
regarding their value, and the necessity of strict compliance
with their demands.
While this is unreservedly true regarding the mechanics
of the organism, — the supply of food and moisture, of light '
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THE LAWS OF CUBE. 439
and heat, of rest and exercise, of oxygenated air, the regu-
lation of sexual functions, and the removal as far as possible
of all deleterious influences, — the fact that law also reigns
supreme in the mental and moral spheres, as regards the
proper character and amount of their stimuli, and their effect
upon health and disease, is but partially realized.
By this, reference is here intended to mind cure and faith
cure, as popularly understood. These two departments of
the human organism have still hanging over them the veil
of mystery and supernaturalism, with which ignorance has
in the past clothed the plainest cases of cause and effect now
known to us.
That the superstitious regard now manifested towards this
class of cures is wholly dependent upon ignorance of natural
laws, hardly admits* of an intelligent doubt. Investigations
now in progress, as well as results already obtained, all point
unmistakably in this direction. On all sides we are sur-
rounded by what, in our finite ignorance, we call the natural
limitations of knowing. But these are present everywhere
in all investigation. He who pronounces faith cure, or mind
cure any more supernatural than drug, cure, has a very imper-
fect estimate of the limitations of knowledge. Any ade-
quate analysis will prove them both equally beyond the scope
of complete explanation. There is nothing supernatural in
the universe, in the sense of not being amenable to fixed
laws, to an order of manifestation.
Mind Cure, Hypnotism (Objective').
After what has been said, it may seem superfluous to treat
further of this topic. Yet on account of popular miscon-
ceptions, at present entertained, it may not be wholly
out of place to briefly note some of the most prominent
features of this method of cure.
Long before the time when Samuel Hahnemann advised
the use of mesmerism, as it was then called, as an adjuvant
to the homoeopathic remedy, others had made use of what is
now called " cure by suggestion." Doubtless much if not
all of fact that has come down to us regarding the influence
of witchcraft upon health, was in the original, the direct
result of hypnotic power possessed, as is still the case, by a
few persons, and held by them and by others as a super-
natural power, a gift of healing, or of causing sickness. It
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440 THE ARENA.
has been reserved to the present generation to dispel the
halo of superhuman power, and to give a sound scientific
basis to the phenomena hitherto regarded as divine, or
diabolic, as prejudice or interest might dicate. It may be I
have included too much in this optimistic estimate; but
I feel quite sure that a few more years of careful research
will guarantee the assumption.
At the present time the method is largely in the hands of
ignorant people and charlatans, who, not less superstitious
than unscrupulous, appeal solely to the superstition and
fanaticism of their patients ; the reason for this is not far
off. The power of exercising hypnotic influence, like the
ready faculty of carrying a tune, or of distinguishing colors, is
a natural endowment, but is possessed by comparatively few
people. It is an endowment that may lie dormant for years,
wholly unknown to its possessor, until some circumstance
suitable to its manifestation calls it into recognition. In all
probability, not a few have gone through life possessed to
a large degree of this faculty, without ever being conscious
of the fact. That it is capable of cultivation and develop-
ment, as are all other native faculties, is not denied; but
when the substantial basis of native endowment is wanting,
no amount of cultivation can supply the lack. To remove
all suspicion of interest in this discussion, the writer will
confess to not having found in himself the slightest manifes-
tation of this power, as he must also confess to an almost
total inability to carry a tune; but he is wholly unable to
see any more reason for suspecting the deductions of others
in regard to the matter than to doubt the existence of
bacteria, or of disease germs, not one of which has he ever
studied under the microscope. The belief in either case
rests upon precisely the same ground — the universal con*
currence of those who have made these matters a subject of
study, and the failure to disprove of those who have
thoroughly investigated the matters alleged.
While thus confessing at the outset my ignorance, I shall
venture to point out a few classes of patients who, it seems
to me, are likely to be greatly benefited by this method of
cure. A small percentage of cases falls into the hands of
every practitioner which are termed neurotic, hysterical,
hypersensitive, etc., marking out thereby a peculiar class
of patients. Every practising physician has met cases that
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THE LAWS OF CUBE. 441
did not have a single physical ill, the most approved meth-
ods of physical diagnosis could detect, save a peculiar
headache, a persistent cough, or vomiting, or dyspnoea, or
neuralgia, or muscular spasm, or dysuria, not one of which
could be traced to any physical lesion. Such cases resist all
inedicatior, however carefully administered or skilfully pre-
scribed, all hygienic treatment, and baffle the specialist and
the general practitioner alike, and, having worried the whole
round of doctors out of their patience, if not their wits,
remain to this day not one whit improved. What is to be
done with such cases ? They are often not less a burden to
themselves, than to their friends and to the public generally.
For a few, the right drug, or hygienic treatment, has
worked wonders, when mixed with faith; but for those who
have no faith there seems to be no cure. The beginning of
the trouble had its source in the* intellect and imagination,
more than in any physical abnormality, which, if present at
the time, has wholly disappeared. The disease must be
treated, if successfully, by stimuli that appeal to that depart-
ment of the organism where the disease originated, to the
mental. Either these stimuli alone, or in conjunction with
other means, will work wonders. Without the help of the
imagination nothing will be accomplished.
I see no reason why we should not have specialists in this
department, as well as in the otic, or ophthalmic, or renal, or
pulmonary ; — men and women of good, sound medical edu-
cation, and of good reputation, to whom this class of cases
would naturally belong. I will confess to having several
such cases, which I would gladly turn over to such a special-
ist who was accredited and of good reputation. What I
most object to, in this connection, is the air of superiority
and mystery assumed by those who practise this method of
cure at the present time. Hypnotic-power is just as lawful,
in so far as I am able to see, as drug-power, though of a dif-
ferent kind and employing different means. Neither do I
see any reason for supposing it is not in every respect
amenable to natural law.
Faith Cure (Subjective Cure).
The subjective side of mental curing embraces not only
the mental, but also the moral endowments of man's organ-
ism. It has been best defined and limited by One who first,
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442 THE ARENA.
in so far as we know, brought it into popular prominence by
the phrase, " According to your faith be it done unto you."
Of the positive limit of this cure, He once said enthusias-
tically, " If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall
say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place ; and
it shall remove ; and nothing shall be impossible unto you."
Of the required subjective state, as of the first importance in
this method of cure, it is related that in a certain place where
he was teaching his doctrines, " He could do no mighty
works because of their unbelief." That it was not peculiar
to Him to cure in this way, He himself often declared,
44 The works that I do, ye shall do also; and greater works
shall ye do."
That there have been remarkable cures wrought through
the faith of the patient, in modern times, does not admit of
a reasonable doubt. These cases are, however, exceedingly
rare, owing to the peculiar combination of circumstances
necessary to their accomplishment. When these are want-
ing, nothing will supply their place. The method, like
hypnotic curing, is capable of unlimited abuse, and peculiarly
so in the hands of superstitious, ecstatic, hysterical, or un-
scrupulous persons. It is thus made to bear the blame that
in no legitimate sense belongs to it.
As a part of the natural endowments of man, and as
affected by the natural stimuli to which they are calculated
to respond, the cures wrought through the mental and moral
spheres are not any more wonderful than those accomplished
through other natural endowments responding to their nat-
ural stimuli — the cures made through light and tempera?
ture, food and drink, rest and exercise, pure air, or sexual
hygiene. They all are subject to natural (nature's) laws,
and under proper limitations, as in all things else, are subject
to the voluntary control of man.
Surgery (the Mechanical Method of Cure).
The cures wrought by surgery, have reference to the
organism as a mechanical structure for the manifestation of
the phenomena of life. It aims to restore the proper
mechanical relation of parts by the ablation of those that
have become useless, or that threaten life from their diseased
state, or to modify the mechanical action of those that have
become abnormal in their relations to the other parts of the
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THE LAWS OP CUBE. 443
system. In its perfection, surgery restores and maintains
the best possible mechanical relations in each given case of
injury or abnormality. The wonderful advances of surgery
within tho memory of young men in the profession, when
traced to their final source, will be found to depend almost
wholly upon a more careful recognition and observance of
fixed natural laws of the organism, rather than upon new
inventions and better instruments.
DRUG METHODS.
Drug Mechanical.
The drug — mechanical method has a close kinship to
surgery. In its application to certain abnormal states and
conditions of the digestive, respiratory, or circulatory tracts,
its cures often rival surgery in the completeness of the relief
afforded. To remove a mass of indigestible and fermenting
food from the digestive tract by an emetic or cathartic, to
expel the mucus that blocks the bronchi and threatens suf-
focation, by the use of an expectorant or by the effort of vom-
iting; to force the action of a weak heart by stimulants, and
thus prevent, in the present stress, the threatened collapse of
the patient, are mechanical acts, some of which would result
just as beneficially to the system, had the same results been
attained by purely mechanical means.
It is of the utmost importance to the physician to under-
stand how much it is possible to attain by these means;
for in critical cases demanding immediate mechanical relief,
all depends upon promptness and precision of action. For
the efficiency of this method of cure, we rely upon the
well-determined mechanical-vital effects of certain drugs;
that is, we have learned experimentally that certain drugs
act through the vital force of the organism, to produce
certain mechanical results.
Derivative Drug Cure.
It is a fact, long ago recognized, that the organism seldom
carries on two strongly marked morbific processes at the same
time. When a stronger, acute disease invades the system,
the chronic disease generally suspends manifestations. Under
the action of this law of the organism, some wonderful cures
have been reported. In this place, however, it is ample for
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444 THE ARENA.
the present purpose, to simply call attention to this undis-
puted fact.
Acting on these suggestions of nature, or in accordance
with them, many cures have been wrought by counter-irrita-
tion, seatons, blisters, and similar means, as well as by the
application of extreme heat or extreme cold. The rude
cures performed among aboriginal peoples partake largely
of this character — the cauteries, steam ovens, and irritant
drugs. The great drawbacks to these methods of cure are
their limited application, in the first place; and in the second,
that no drugs known meet the exact requirements of these
laws of cure.
There is no such thing as a purely cathartic, emetic,
diuretic, sudorific, or expectorant drug. Neither are there
purely tonic, stimulant, carminative, sedative, narcotic, or
soporific drugs. These are all mythical. There is not a
drug among them that has not other well-marked effects
besides cathartic, expectorant, sedative, or soporific, as the
case may be; and these other effects will make themselves
felt sooner or later, and not infrequently with very disas-
trous results. Hence, whether we look from the standpoint
of the law, the drug is inapplicable, or from that of the drug,
the law is unavailable. The inaccuracy of striving to use
only a part of legitimate drug-effects, and ignoring, or striv-
ing to ignore, the remaining effects, can never result in a
science of cure; curing must by this method remain an
art — the art of dodging unpleasant results.
Fundamentally, then, the principle that guides drug giv-
ing in old-school medicine is unscientific. It ignores facts,
strives to override laws, or what is as bad, misapplies them.
It is not asserted that beneficial results are not reached in
this school of practice from the administration of drugs; this
would be a most erroneous statement of facts. But it is
claimed — and a mere statement of facts proves conclusively
— that no scientific results can be expected by this method
of approaching the subject.
No method can be called truly scientific that does not take
into account, as far as possible, all the ascertainable facts in
the case. To administer a drug, when only one or two out of a
multitude of its effects on the human organism are taken into
account, is not science, but experiment. To report a cure
from the use of a drug where all the elements of the sickness
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THE LAWS OF CUBE. 445
cured, both subjective and objective, are not fully given, is to
give but partial data concerning the antecedents of a result,
or experiment, which can never be repeated by another, since
some of the most important elements of the experiment have
been allowed to pass unrecorded. To give a drug known to
produce a well-ascertained sequence of phenomena, and not
to note the relation of the whole drug power to the entire
manifestation of disease, is to ignore scientific methods of
investigation.
Cure by Drug Similars.
The entire range of the disease-producing power of each drug
used must be known; that is, all the morbid changes and symptoms
which that drug is capable of producing upon the healthy human
system must have been observed in its fullest extent, before we may
hope to select from the medicines thus investigated the proper
remedy in any given case of disease. — " The Organon of Healing"
Samuel Hahnemann, 1833.
Actual experience, the only infaUible oracle of medical art,
teaches, in every carefully conducted experiment, that that drug
proved, in its effect upon healthy persons, to produce the greatest
number of symptoms similar to those found in a given case of dis-
ease, when administered in the proper doses, will rapidly, thoroughly,
and permanently cure this diseased condition. — Ibid., Sec. 25.
The only really salutary treatment is that, according to which the
totality of symptoms of a natural disease is combated by a medicine
in commensurate dose, capable of creating in the healthy body symp-
toms most similar to those of the natural disease. — Ibid., Sec. 70, 5th.
These principles of drug-giving were announced to the
world two generations ago. Tcnday each " carefully con-
ducted experiment " confirms rfthe fundamental solidity of
the position then taken. In the hands of thousands of intel-
ligent and educated men, the world over, there has not in
any case arisen a reason to change the expression of natural
law here announced.
This law is easily a matter of demonstration, and is the
kind of cure wrought in innumerable cases (without being
so recognized) in the old-school practice.* Why this is a law
of cure, no more concerns the practising physician than why
gravity attracts, concerns the builder of locomotive engines.
It is amply sufficient, in either case, to know the best meth-
ods of applying the law. The objection that we cannot
explain satisfactorily the why, is not valid as against the use
• The writer will furnish, on application, reprints of a " Study of Arsenic,"
fflnstrating this point.
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446 THE ARENA.
of the law in either case, nor is it at all necessary to its most
successful application.
The observance of the law of similars, in the administra-
tion of drugs, insures success to a degree not to be attained
by any method, independent of a uniform controlling plan.
It enables the practitioner to employ drugs in the cure of a
case in hand, which he has never known to be applied in any
similar case of disease. It also empowers him to meet new
cases and new phases of disease with a certainty of beneficial
results not now offered by any other known method. And
he may do this with a sense of security, as to the propriety
of his treatment, if only he has carefully complied with two
requirements : —
1. That he has so considered the action of the drug upon
the healthy human organism as to have formed a correct
conception of its characteristic effects.
2. That he has so completely mastered all the manifesta-
tions of disease in a given case, as to clearly perceive its
leading and characteristic symptoms.
If now these characteristics in both instances closely re-
semble each other, he will certainly witness beneficial results,
provided the drug be given in the proper dose, and at
proper intervals.
It is not claimed that cure will invariably follow; that
may be impossible. But the drug will in any case be the
most suitable for the disease in hand, and cannot be
surpassed by the use of any other that less closely
simulates in its effects the present case of sickness.
It is quite unnecessary to premise that this is a most
laborious and painstaking method of practice. The ne-
cessity of proving di^igs on the healthy human organism, in
order to know what they are capable of doing, is in itself an
immense task, and one requiring the highest natural talent
for original investigation. But when this has been accom-
plished, and the results have been put in the most available
shape for reference, the labor of comparing, sifting, and
rejecting, in order to find the most similar drug, is not
equalled by the labor in selecting the remedy by any other
method. But is not this usually the case, when experiments
are to be conducted in close conformity to any natural law?
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MORAL AND IMMORAL LITERATURE.
BY HOWARD MacQUEARY.
Neve# before could it be more forcibly and truthfully
said than it may be to-day, " Of making many books
there is no end." And in such a book-making age as
this, it is all important to know what books to read,
what not to read. But who shall be our guide in
this matter — the government, the church, or the indi-
vidual ? We know the lesson of history on this subject. Both
the government and the church have condemned and burned
the best literature the best minds have produced. The
Roman emperors came near destroying all the sacred books
of Christendom; the Roman church (and also the Protestant)
tried hard to throttle new-born science in its cradle, by con-
demning the works of Copernicus, Newton, and others.
These and other such historical blunders warn us that no
government and no church can be accepted as a literary guide
and censor. Yet, a year or so ago, the postmaster-general
of an enlightened republic prohibited a Russian novel-
ist's book from passing through the mails; and certain self-
constituted societies for the suppression of vice, have tried
to suppress inoffensive novels, while pharisaic libraries have
excluded them from their hallowed shelves. Let us not
boast, then, too soon of the " liberty of the press," and " lib-
erty of thought and speech." All people are " liberal " as
long as you agree with them; but beware of contradicting
them or shocking their tastes and prejudices. Offend thus,
and you are a doomed man — even in the " closing years of
the nineteenth century " I One would think that the quick-
est way to suppress vice is to expose and denounce it, and
the surest way of exploding errors is to allow the utmost
freedom in discussing them. But let a clergyman preach
plainly on the seventh commandment, or let an independent
thinker question the " tradition of the elders," and see how
many will be "shocked," and propose a limitation of the
freedom of speech. Let us be careful in throwing stones at
447
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448 THE ABENA.
the Past, or we may hurt the feelings of the Present. Let
us cast the beam out of our own eyes, that we may see more
clearly how to pluck the mote out of our brothers* eyes.
But to come to the point : If neither the government nor the
church may be accepted as our literary judge, then it is of
supreme importance that the individual should be properly
educated on the choice of books, and the only power that can
do this is the press — that is, literary critics, reviewers, essay-
ists, etc.
In order to attain what is and what is not " moral litera-
ture," let us take some classic specimens. And to begin at
the top, we will take first — the Bible. This book contains
many passages which cannot be read in public service or at
family prayers — for instance, the "Song of Solomon" and
the first chapter of the " Epistle to the Romans." Most com-
mentators allegorize the ancient " Song," but even that does
no give it a sufficiently refined tone to make it tolerable to
delicate ears; and so "an advanced clergyman" of New York
City, a few years ago, suggested that the Bible should be
"expurgated," but he thereby almost " expurgated " himself
from his fashionable church. The first chapter of the " Epis-
tle to the Romans "is a graphic description of the vices of
Roman society eighteen centuries ago — a description amply
confirmed by Roman writers. But it was fortunate for St. Paid
that our late postmaster-general did not live in those days,
and have charge of the Roman post; for, if so, I fear the good
Christians at Rome would never have heard the profound
doctrines and wholesome precepts of this epistle, simply
because its first chapter states — facts.
But, not to dwell on sacred literature, let us ask next,
What think ye of Shakespeare ? Are his writings moral or
immoral ? What of Sir Jack Falstaff , or his majesty, King
Henry V., or the monstrous Caliban ? The absurd gallan-
tries of Sir John with the " Merry Wives," the coarse love-
making of the rough soldier king with Katherine of France,
the insulting words of the brutal Caliban about Miranda, or
even Emilia's plain language in " Othello " (iv. 2) must be
very shocking to our prudes and refined people. M. Taine
says : " Shakespeare's words are too indecent to be translated.
His characters call things by their dirty names, and compel
the thoughts to particular images of physical love. The
talk of gentlemen and ladies is full of coarse allusions ; we
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MORAL AND IMMORAL LITERATURE. 449
should have to find out an ale-house of the lowest description,
to hear the like words now-a-days." Yet, would you have
us throw aside our Shakespeare ? Would you keep it out
of schoolgirls' hands? No? Why not? Why, because the
inspired dramatist is one of the greatest moral teachers of his-
tory. He makes us loathe vice by painting it in all its hide-
ousness. He makes us love virtue and nobility, by showing
us their intrinsic beauty and lovableness. He does not
44 preach " to us, but he shows us life — both sides of it —
and thereby teaches us how to choose between the good and
the evil. His villains are the most perfect devils ever
created ; his heroes the most heroic of the sons of men. His
women are real women; his men, real men. If he were less
44 immoral," he would be the more unreal, unhistorical — a
mere literary dilettante, who would influence no man for good
or for evil. As it is, he reveals the great passions of human
nature, and shows how they may be properly controlled and
directed.
In the estimation of competent judges, the greatest poem
Byron ever wrote is " Don Juan." Yet few women would
admit (to men) that they had read this poem, and I dare say
it will shock some people to hear.that a clergyman has men-
tioned this 44 immoral " poem in public. It would take a
great deal of courage to defend it as a masterpiece of litera-
ture — one which may be read with impunity, perhaps with
profit. Yet M. Taine says, " 4 Don Juan ' is a satire on the
abuses in the present state of society, and not a eulogy of
vice ; " and as such, he comments on it at length. If we read
the poem as a satire on society — an autobiography of Byron
— shall we be greatly demoralized? Byron was a man
like unto ourselves. His passions were simply exaggerations
of ours. What he was we may be, if we are not on our
guard; and may it not be profitable to study moral mon-
strosities ? If we would eradicate evil from our own natures,
and from society, must we not begin by diagnosis — by a
study of its causes ? And do not the " Don Juans " of litera-
ture and history afford us materials for such study? But I
am not " Don's " apologist, and ye who are afraid of being
demoralized by reading the history of rakes, beware of Byron I
Shelley is equally " offensive " as Byron, and his " Queen
Mab," and u Revolt of Islam " created as much scandal, when
they appeared, as his fellow-poet's work did. Shelley was
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450 THE ABBNA.
one of the most unearthly spirits ever embodied in human
form, one of the loftiest poetical geniuses, one of the noblest
souls, and one of the most, enthusiastic philanthropists who
ever toiled for suffering humanity. But he has received the
penalty which a cruel and unjust world inflicts upon its
prophets. Even the uninspired Goethe, "the strong, much-
toiling sage, with spirit free from mists, and sane and clear,"
as Mr. Morley says, " who combined the higher and lower
wisdom, and put moral truths into forms of words that fix
themselves with stings in the reader's mind " — even he, the
corypheus of modern literature, is condemned by some as
44 immoral." And what shall we say of our own Whitman ?
Those who love the chaff of commonplace and the dry straw
of conventionality, find no pleasure, no glimmer of poetic fire
in 44 Leaves of Grass." It is all 44 wood, hay, and stubble "
to them. They would not accept it, as many do, as 44 a mar-
vellous, almost miraculous message to the world, full of
thought, philosophy, poetry, and music." Victor Hugo, per-
haps the most versatile mind of modern France, the writer of
philosophy, history, romance, drama, is intolerable to prudes.
His wonderful novel, 44 Les Miserables," has probably had a
greater influence for good than any other book of this cen-
tury; yet it gives a most shocking picture of a Parisian gri-
sette and her illegitimate child. It is a scathing condemnation
. of social injustice, an eloquent plea for 44 the lower classes,"
as against 44 the higher classes." But all its force, beauty,
merit, is marred, in the estimation of many, by the introduc-
tion of Fantine. Scott's 44 Heart of Midlothian" and
Dickens' greatest novel, 44 David Copperfield," both turn on a
seduction — would have been impossible without embodying
such an event. But who was ever demoralized by reading
these stories ? Is the fate of the unfortunate EfBe Deans or
poor little Em'ly alluring to any girl? Are they not whole-
some warnings, rather, to those who might feel tempted to
tread the forbidden path ? And what young man would be
enticed to sin by the rakes that ruined these girls ? Recall
Robertson's remorseful exclamation, 44 1 am the devil" ! when
he meets Butler, the clergyman, in a lonely dell, and say
whether his sin had not turned to an apple of Sodom ere it
had been tasted. Or look upon the dead body of Steerforth,
stretched out on the seashore, and think of the sorrow he
had brought upon his mother, the misery he had caused
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MORAL AND IMMORAL LITERATURE. 451
others, the sufferings he himself had endured in consequence
of his sin, and say whether a young man is apt to be tempted
to follow his mad career.
The greatest American novel is Hawthorne's "Scarlet
Letter," but this thrilling story also turns on a seduction. It
gives us the fall of a clergyman, — no unheard-of event in
ancient or modern times. But the pious Dimmesdale suffers
the agonies of devils, and that awful scarlet letter on Hester
Prynne's bosom seems to be a spark from the lowest hell,
burning into the poor woman's soul and blasting all her
happiness. A more recent novel, strikingly like the " Scarlet
Letter," is Maxwell Grey's " Silence of Dean Maitland." But
this, too, must be condemned, if we accept the criterion of
our literary censors. True, it teaches us, in eloquent terms
and by forcible illustration, to " keep innocency, and take
heed to the thing that is right," but it enforces this truth by
narrating the fall of a clergyman and the ruin of a poor
girl — and such things must not be discussed in novels!
Would it be believed that any rational mind could object to
George Eliot and Mrs. Humphrey Ward, and even to Madame
de Steel, as " immoral " writers ? It is even so ! I know
well-educated, clever, sensible people who think their moral
tone scarcely enough elevated.
About two years ago a novel appeared (it is not necessary
to mention its nam.e), which was a commentary on the seventh
commandment, and has had an enormous sale, reaching
something like one hundred and seventy-five thousand copies.
It so " shocked " the moral sensibilities of the public, that a
set of New York Pharisees finally seized it, together with
several other books of like nature, and haled the publisher
before a police magistrate. But so little reason had these
pietists for their action, that the grand jury quickly dismissed
the case. The story is a tale of a rouS who made a great
deal of money under the Tweed regime, and lived an
unchaste life until his accidental acquaintance with a pure
woman taught him to prize and practise the virtues he had
hitherto despised. "In the first hundred pages," says the
author, "the pendulum is drawn back to its full limit, in
order to give it the requisite swing when it is released.
And what a swing it is ! Every moral lapse is followed by
the direst retribution, and at the close the unhappy hero
seeks death rather than a possible return to the life he once
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452 THE AEENA.
led so joyously. It is a terrible arraignment of unchastity,
and has wrought a complete reformation in several men's
characters. It teaches that the sister or daughter of another
should be as sacred to us as our own."
Another " shocking " story made its appearance about the
same time, and twenty-five thousand copies of it were sold in
five months. It was written by a brilliant woman, who is
laboring honestly for the social and moral betterment of her
fellows. The story is based on facts; the hero, who is killed
in the romance, being at present a prominent member of
society. It is no whit more immoral in tone than any of
those novels already mentioned, and, with the exception
of a few pages, the primmest prude could not object to
its language. Yet a certain public library in St. Louis
excluded it from its consecrated shelves, and many who
began reading it threw it aside or burned it. Some respect-
able reviews even said that no pure woman could have
known the facts embodied in this book, or would have
written about them — as if, forsooth, pure-minded women do
not read such facts in the papers, and discuss them every
day. The strangest part of this senseless criticism was that
the women, in whose interest the book was written, were
the mast vehement in their condemnation of it ; while many
men admitted its truth and approved its purpose.
What, then, is moral and what is immoral literature ? .
Certainly such books as those cited cannot rightfully be
considered " immoral." They deal with the great passions
of human nature and the common facts of experience, and
their object is to elevate the mind and ennoble the heart.
This gives them a high moral character. A book is not
immoral simply because it discusses ugly sins; but when it
lacks a spark of talent or a lofty purpose it is both degrad-
ing to the mind and depraving to the heart. When obscen-
ity is introduced merely for the sake of being vulgar, or to
create a sensation and make money, then the writer is worthy
of the utmost condemnation, and we make sure he will
receive it quickly from all truly refined and enlightened
people. Literary trash, therefore, whether it be the nickel
or dime novel, the detective story, the flashy, sensational
novel, or the sentimental twaddle of the dilettante litterateur,
is demoralizing, and should be strictly eschewed by all classes
of readers, from the waiting-maid and shoeblack to the
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MORAL AND IMMORAL LITERATURE. 453
savant. Better to read nothing at all, than to read what
will neither enlighten the mind nor purify the soul nor fire
the heart with generous ambitions and aspirations. There is
absolutely no excuse for any one's reading inferior litera-
ture, for the best books may be had as cheaply as the worst —
at a merely nominal cost. It is said, however, that it is use-
less to write and preach against vicious literature, for the chil-
dren of this world are wiser on this subject than the children
of light. The venders of literary rubbish adopt the cleverest
means of advertising and disposing of their wares. Thus,
every month or two, they will distribute gratuitously, from
house to house, samples of their " illustrated papers," and
newsdealers tell us that this is a very effective means of
increasing the circulation of such papers. Then the pub-
lishers frequently send packages of sensational stories to the
newsdealers, with the latter's business card neatly printed on
each package, and ask them to distribute these samples,
charging them nothing for the advertisement. Of course,
the u samples " are distributed, sales are increased, and the
youths of the land are intellectually and morally depraved.
But those who have had practical experience in this matter
tell us that writing and preaching against the evil is simply
beating the air. " The remedy is not denunciation, but dis-
placement of bad by good literature. Those interested in
the subject must counteract the methods of the vender of
bad books by helping to advertise and circulate good ones."
When should children — especially girls — be allowed to
read such books as those suggested ? Whenever their minds
are sufficiently developed to appreciate their literary merit,
and when their moral judgment has been sufficiently culti-
vated to draw the right lesson from them. Girls and boys
are very precocious these days. They pick up, on the street
or at the public school or from the daily papers, a knowledge
of evil much sooner than their parents sometimes imagine.
Let not parents cherish fond delusions about their children.
Their boy in knee-breeches, or their girl in short dresses, can
often instruct them in the ways of the world. Therefore,
they should be frank with their children, and begin early to
train their moral faculties. Don't prohibit them from read-
ing such books as those now discussed; for from the days of
Adam and Eve to the present, prohibition has always
increased a desire for the forbidden fruit. Be intimate
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454 THE ABENA.
with your children ; read with them ; talk with them ; put
the "great masters" into their hands, and cultivate their
tastes for strong mental and ethical food ; show them how
to distinguish between the good and the evil ; inspire them
(as you may) with a hatred of vice and a love of the true,
the beautiful, and the good ; and be assured that the results
will be entirely satisfactory. In ignorance alone is danger ;
in knowledge alone is safety. Sooner or later boys and
girls must learn of the evil in the world; and unless the
" devil's work " be anticipated and forestalled, he will get
the start, and will not be easily overtaken and conquered.
Many a young girl has been ruined simply because she
was so unsophisticated that she did not understand the
approaches of the tempter, and was taken unawares. If she
had known, she would have repelled his first advances, and
have driven him back to his native hell. Therefore, give
children a knowledge of good and evil as soon as they are
able to receive it — and that is much sooner than many
suppose.
It must not be inferred from the above that the writer
believes that all literature ought to have a moral — that
every poem or novel should contain a sermon. On the
contrary, the literary genius will never "preach." He will
simply paint nature and man in their true colors, and let
the moral take care of itself. This is the secret of Shake-
speare's wonderful power. He shows us human nature in all
its grandeur or in all its degradation; he presents embodi-
ments of good and evil, and lets us take our choice, knowing
full well that we will choose rightly, or, if not, that no
amount of moralizing and preaching will force us to make
such a choice. While the French writers are, perhaps, too
careless about the moral tone and purpose of their books,
English writers are apt to run to the other extreme, and tire
us by their eternal sermonizing. Give us truth and life,
and let us do our own moralizing.
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JAPAN AND HER RELATION TO FOREIGN
POWERS.
BY ANNIE ELIZABETH CHENEY.
That Japan has not received her just rights from other
nations, must be acknowledged by those who have carefully
investigated the matter of her treaty with foreign powers;
and that she has tried by every means possible to gain a
hearing, must also be conceded. Probably no country has
been revolutionized as rapidly as Japan. Within twenty
years a complete and radical change has taken place in her
ideas, habits, and government. She has willingly and gladly,
since the gratad achievement of Commodore Perry, thrown
open her gates to the whole world. Hungry for knowledge
to be obtained outside of her own resources, she has wel-
comed the stranger from every land, and sent young men of
her best blood to foreign universities for education.
But since the day when the gallant Perry sailed into the
harbor of Uraga in the bay of Yedo, and lay quietly resting
with his squadron of ships in the shadow of Fuji-no-yama,
though in all other matters Japan has advanced, in that
of a just treaty with foreign powers she has remained sta-
tionary.
Having peculiar and adequate means of ascertaining some
true and terrible facts growing out of this antiquated treaty
(facts rather difficult to obtain, except one be familiar with
Japanese magazines and newspapers, or disentangle a lan-
guage hardly understood by the West), I wish to present
them in clear English to the thinking people of the Occident,
challenging investigation and debate.
I write from the point of Japan, not of the West. I have
transformed my Occidental eyes to the angle of the Orient,
and see as the Japanese beholds; for the time I feel with
tender Japanese nerves, and think with Japanese brains.
How otherwise can these wronged people be understood who
ask from us, who are stronger than they, nothing but justice ?
466
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456 THE ARENA.
To view this question fairly, one must get somewhat into the
environment produced by Japanese history, realize somewhat
the suffering of the people and their struggles for liberty;
also understand the bravery with which the inhabitants of
these small, danger-locked islands have protected them
against all invaders, and held them unconquered since the
age of mythology.
To-day beautiful Nippon lies calmly sleeping upon the
bosom of her blue waters, but her sleep is like that of
the watch-dog; for west of her is China and Corea, north the
Russian territory, Siberia, while but little farther away are
English Hongkong and British India. Yet undaunted she
has maintained her independent government, and undaunted
she still will hold it against all obstacles.
The Japanese have an unconquerable spirit, but up to the
last point of endurance they will suffer even imposition and
injustice rather than resort to arms; and every reasonable
means, every just policy, every strong effort, will be tried to
gain a hearing regarding their relationship A^th other na-
tions. They understand the principle of justice themselves,
and believe that other people understand it also; and it will
take much suffering and discouragement to convince them
otherwise. So intense is their law-abiding sense, that rather
than break a mandate they suffer by it, thereby being sub-
jected to numerous unjust decisions in the trials decided by
foreign officials, and rarely, if ever, receiving any preferment
from them in favor of justice.
The Japanese people are patient, polite, and anxious to
conciliate foreigners ; but this endurance must come to an end,
and sooner or later a new order of things will be established.
The cause of the complaint of Japan to-day is not the pos-
sible menace of foreign governments, but their apathy. If
they are a people entitled to respect, if the pages of their
record are comparatively clean, if past history proves them
invincible, why, in the name of justice, is their earnest peti-
tion for treaty revision continually ignored? Is it the
narrow policy of Christendom to subjugate into crawling,
cringing beggars all races who do not believe as it believes ?
Is it the policy of Christendom to compel by might rather
than right? Is it the policy of Christendom to stoop to
heathen methods ia order to GQUfrol a people who perhaps
em ttunk?
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JAPA.N. 457
In 1853 Commodore Perry brought with him to Japan a
letter dated Nov. 13, 1852, from President Fillmore of the
United States of America. It was addressed to the emperor,
but in reality was delivered into the hands of the Shogun
Tokugawa. The object of this message was to establish a
friendship between America and Japan. In 1854 an amicable
treaty was made with the United States, and soon after with
other European countries. These were only treaties of friend-
ship, and had no concern with trade. In 1858 the present
treaties were entered into between Japan and America,
France, Great Britain, and Holland. The original draft was
drawn by the hand of Townsend Harris, American consul-
general, and acceded to by the Japanese feudal government
without alteration; with the understanding, however, that
after the experimental test and the lapse of a certain number
of years, if the agreement became unsatisfactory, a change
was to be made. The experiment has proved that the Article
VI. in the treaty between America and Japan, the articles of
corresponding meaning in the treaties between her and the
other nations mentioned, and the annexed tariff are pre-
eminently unsatisfactory.
Article VI. in the Americo-Japanese treaty is: —
Americans committing offences against Japanese shall be tried
in American consular courts, and when guilty shall be punished
according to the American law. Japanese committing offences
against Americans shall be tried by the Japanese authorities, and
punished according to the Japanese law. The consular courts shall
be opened to Japanese creditors, to enable them to recover their just
claims against American citizens, and the Japanese courts shall in
like manner be open to American citizens for the recovery of their
just claims against Japanese.
All claims for forfeitures or penalties for violations of this treaty,
or of the articles regulating trade, which are appended hereunto,
shall be sued for in the consular courts, and all recoveries shall be
delivered to the Japanese authorities.
Neither the American nor Japanese governments are to be held
responsible for the payment of any debts contracted by their respec-
tive citizens or subjects.
The tariff annexed to the treaty was originally: First class
of imported goods, duty free; second class, five per «ent
ad valorem; third class, thirty-five per cent; fourth class,
twenty per cent. But by the Convention of Yedo, June
25, 1866, between Japan and United States of America,
Franpe, Great Brjtaifl* W4 H°Uwd, the higljegt rate of duty
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458 THE ABENA.
was lowered to five per cent ad valorem. Opium is the one
and only article prohibited to be imported.
According to the article in this treaty, and the annexed
tariff, Japan's rights and profits are entirely ignored. When-
ever her people complain about the injustice received from
foreigners, they have no power of decision, but must rely
entirely upon the foreign authorities; and also when the
internal economical or commercial circumstance necessitates
a change of the rate of income tax upon the importation, it
cannot be done. Of course many of the Japanese believe
in free trade, but that makes no difference in regard to this
question of justice.
In this same treaty we find Article XIII: —
After the 4th of July, 1872, upon the desire of either of the
American or Japanese governments, and on one year's notice given
by either party, this treaty and such portions of the treaty of
Kanagawa as remain unrevoked in this treaty, together with regula-
tions hereunto annexed, or those that may be hereafter introduced,
shall be subject to revision by commissioners appointed on both sides
for this purpose, who will be empowered to decide on, and insert
therein, such amendments as experience shall prove to be desirable.
When the date specified in the treaty arrived, the
Japanese government demanded revision, because during
these preceding years of experience they lost in every case
their right and profit. Since then until now, they have been
continuously requesting the revision, but the foreign gov-
ernments still ignore their plea.
July 25, 1878, a treaty was made between America and
Japan, in which the above tariff was annulled ; but so long
as the treaty of 1858 between America and Japan, and
the same treaty and the annexed tariff between Japan and
other foreign countries continue to be effective, this annexed
tariff must necessarily be applied to the trade between
America and Japan. The treaty is annulled in theory, but
not in practice.
Some of the instances growing out of the application of
these treaties with foreign powers, which I shall relate
farther on, may not seem to have any bearing upon the
question ; but upon consideration it will be seen that they
are extremely pertinent, and that Japan, being hampered by
her lack of judicial power, is everywhere taken advantage of
for the selfish aggrandizement of other nations -rr- in other
words, her hands are tied.
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JAPAN. 459
The excuses these powerful Western nations make must be
investigated. Here are some of them: " The Japanese are not
civilized; their laws are not good; they are not Christian."
Right here it is well to ask the question, What is civiliza-
tion? Does it pertain to mental or spiritual or physical
advancement? It seems to me that the word is very loosely
used and misapplied without consideration of the environ-
ment of a people. It must be admitted that there are many
grades of civilization, and that the highest type must neces-
sarily be that which evolves as its culmination the most
perfect specimen of spiritual, mental, and physical develop-
ment. It is true that no nation more than approximates to
this equality, but I contend that probably Japan has as good
claim to such a condition as has America or the most
civilized European countries.
If from the material advancement a nation is to be judged,
and if the quantity, rather than the quality, of her improve-
ments is to be the criterion, then Japan, as compared with
the West, must take a back place; for in number her tele-
phone and telegraph lines, her railroads and steamships, are
few. She is a poor nation, having forty million people on
her small islands, the soil of which is already nearly
exhausted. If, however, civilization is a question of the
quality of her improvements, then no country can outrank
her; for every modern invention is utilized there in its best
and latest aspect. Recognizing this fact, then, it must be
admitted that Japan, from the practical standpoint, is not
uncivilized.
If Japan is to be judged regarding her art, even the
critical West itself places her in the front rank; for though
her great artists may have been less numerous than those of
Italy, they are the peers of the Western masters in the
quality of their work. This being admitted, Japan is
civilized in art.
If in architecture she is to pass the ordeal of judgment as
to her towers and temples, it is known that in their perfect
adaptation to her earthquakes and her physical surroundings,
no nation can surpass her. The West builds in stone and
iron, but Japan has a perfect architecture in wood. If adapta-
tion to environment is the test of correct architecture, then
in this respect also Japan is civilized.
If civilization in Japan is judged by the education of the
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460 THE ABENA.
people, then besides the numerous colleges and private
schools, for every six hundred persons there is one public
school, making in all seventy thousand, also an immense
university. The education is compulsory; consequently
there are no illiterate persons. If education be the test of
civilization, then Japan is civilized.
If cleanliness be the test, the whole world knows and
admits that Japan is clean.
If religion be the test, in no country do Buddhism and
other beliefs receive a higher or more spiritual interpretation.
The religion of Japan is called heathen. If the word
" heathen " is used in contradistinction to " Christianity," it
may be so; but if the word " heathen " is one of ignominy
applied to a people of a low moral standard, with no high or
spiritual conceptions, it is not appropriate. The Japanese
may be anti-Christian, but they are certainly not anti-
moral; at least they have a far higher conception of morality
than the Mohammedans, who are classed as non-heathen by
Mr. Webster of the dictionary. In truth, the Japanese admit
of all religions in their countiy, and have the synthetic idea
in regard to them. This age is supposed to be rather liberal;
and one's religious belief, as long as it does not interfere with
that of another, is not expected to be coerced. Apply this
same liberality or justice to nations, and a fairer conception
is reached. To the heathen, non-Christian, unthinking, and
free-thinking people in our own glorious America, justice is
administered as readily as to the most orthodox, bigoted,
sectarian, Christian church member. Why, then, on this
score of religion are Japanese counted uncivilized?
If the women of a country be the test, Japan has produced
beautiful, tender women, whom Sir Edwin Arnold claims to
be superior to the men. Like the women of the civilized
West, they are only now merging into that freedom of
development which their evolution is according them ; and
if they are or have been wronged, it is the universal wrong,
of which Japan can take but her just share of blame.
If the laws of a country are a test, then Western savants
learned in law, pronounce the laws of Japan and their admin-
istration equal if not superior to those of other nations ; the
judges are independent of other executive departments, and
a general consistency in the administration of justice is
admitted.
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JAPAN. 461
The postal system of Japan is universally conceded to be
the best in the world.
If, as it has been asserted, Japan is not civilized because
of some of her peculiar practical social habits, — such as the
business of the " jinrikisha " man ; or the conservative
custom of blacking the teeth, brought down from feudal
times and adopted by many married women; and last, but
not least, the sitting of the people apparently upon the floor,
instead of using comfortable elevated chairs as we do ; —
then let us compare these habits of the Japanese with those
of our own people, and view ourselves with unprejudiced
eyes. Japan has her " jinrikisha " man, but he is not a slave;
he simply conveys another human being for money; it is
purely a matter of business with him, an occupation which
he chooses from his muscular fitness for it ; he is not struck
a blow; he is not driven; he is a human being doing that
work from choice and financial necessity. We have our
porters and our burden bearers here — men who carry and
lift enormous* trunks and heavy packages, drudges and
servers of others. With them, also, it is a question of finan-
cial necessity and muscular fitness. The cases are paral-
lel. Next, the conservative married women blacken their
teeth. This, it must be admitted, is an unreasonable and a
bad practice viewed from any standpoint, and I am glad to
say the younger wives are abandoning it. But we find a
custom in our Western nations still more barbarous and un-
reasonable; that is the piercing of the ears of our girls,
wives, and mothers. The black from the teeth can at any
time be removed, but the ugly gash in the beautiful human
ear is permanent. Again, the Japanese as a people sit
apparently upon the floor, but in reality this is not so.
Their matting rugs are padded like mattresses, and cushions
are also used. The custom grew out of their many centuries
of war, when constant moving from place to place, with the
uncertainty of a stable locality, necessitated the abandoning
of unnecessary furniture. A small advantage, however, is
gained by this habit, as the floors are kept with exquisite
neatness, and no dirt is seen anywhere.
Now having considered these minor questions regarding
their civilization, we will drop the subject, as it must at
once be seen that Japan ranks fairly with other highly
civilized countries.
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462 Tffti AREfcA.
Yet in spite of all 'this evidence of a well-balanced nation,
Japan is dealt with in this treaty as though hers were an
uncivilized race. Upon this point of their civilization the
people of Japan are very sensitive; and it may be thought
strange that, feeling thus, she does not reject this unjust,
out-of-date treaty. She suffers and endures only because
she dreads to disturb her amicable relations with foreign
powers, until every other means has been employed to gain
revision.
Right here I wish to produce evidence in the statement
written in March, 1875, by Hands, the American consul-
general to Japan, who also wrote this one-sided treaty. He
says in substance: —
The tariff fixed in the treaty of 1858 is fixed by me, and about its
articl.es I never consulted any one. After the draft was made it
remained intact without alteration from any Japanese official. As
the Japanese had no experience in levying the tariff on imported
goods, or to manage the income from the custom house, I was
obliged to settle as above, though it was an example never known
before. Really the Japanese officers frankly said that they had no
knowledge in such matters, and consequently they entirely relied
upon my decision, putting their full trust in me.
This was in feudal times, when the Japanese newly came
into contact with foreigners. In his treatise on exterrito-
riality, again he says in substance: —
The gift of the exterritorial right to the Americans in Japan,
as it is stipulated in the treaty, is the thing which is against my
conscience. When I spoke with the secretary of state in the United
States of America, he admitted the injustice of the interference
with the internal law of a foreign country, and he said, u But how
can we do otherwise when we stipulate a treaty with an Oriental
country? — as, for instance, the treaty between the United States,
Turkey, Persia, and all other barbarous races is the same, not being
altered even in Congress." I am now old and am very sorry that I
cannot take off these unjust articles before I die. I hope that in the
future others at least will witness the change.
This is the substance of the statement of the American
consul-general.
Having explained what this treaty is, let me give some
startling facts to prove the injustice which results from it.
In 1868 in April, an American arranged to send privately
three hundred Japanese to the Sandwich Islands, and to pay
them wages of five dollars per month, for three years. This
became known to the Japanese government. Really this
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JAPAN. 468
was slavery. So a Japanese official went to Yokohama, and
informed this slave owner that the Hawaiian Islands were
not in any way connected with the treaty, and desired that
the Japanese then on board ship be restored; but the
American ignored his request, and sailed away. About
this the government consulted with the American minister
in Japan ; but he replied, " He is the consul in Hawaii, and
the ship belongs to the English ; therefore I have no right
to interfere." The next year the Japanese government sent
a messenger to Hawaii to recall its countrymen.
In 1871 a Peruvian compressed two hundred and thirty
Chinamen, his ship being at that time in the port of Yoko-
hama. The Japanese government desired to rescue the
Chinese, but the Peruvian made the excuse that Japan had
no right to interfere with a foreign ship. In spite of this,
Japan decided that international justice must be done, so
she restored the Chinese to their own government. Upon
this the Peruvian ambassador came to Japan, and claimed
indemnity, blaming the Japanese government for injustice.
The difficulty was finally settled by arbitration, the Russian
emperor deciding in favor of Japan.
In 1853, when Commodore Perry went to Japan, the
Russian ambassador went also. The Japanese government
presented its claim for Karafto (Saghalien), the northern-
most island of Japan. Many Russians were there, and the
Japanese would not be imposed upon by them. Besides
this, they indulged in whale and seal fishing in the Japanese
waters ; therefore Japan presented her claim to Russia, send-
ing her officers many times to that government; but owing
to their lack of understanding of the Russian policy, they
came back unsuccessful. The result was that the island was
destined to be the land of intermingled settlement, Russian
and Japanese — a queer phenomenon in history, a sort of
mutual possession. Russia is a large country; Japan is
small; it was the time of the feudal system; the internal
administration had to be cared for, and the Japanese govern-
ment had no time in that instance to investigate as to the
best policy. After the restoration, in 1870, the American
government arbitrated and consulted with the Russian gov-
ernment, fixing the boundary of Japan's possession on that
island at the fiftieth degree north latitude, the line crossing
about the middle — a very disadvantageous division for
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464 THE AKENA.
Japan. But Russia would not consent to the arrangement.
Consequently several ambassadors were sent in succession,
but nothing was arranged. Finally, in 1875, the whole
island was ceded to Russia; and minute islands, mere dots
on the map, about a dozen and a half in number, to be dis-
covered by the microscope, were taken for it. This is the
first and only time that any Japanese land was exchanged
for other since the history of that country began.
Here is another fact: Some time before 1877 an English-
man called Hartley imported opium. The custom officers
objected, according to the treaty. Hartley disobeyed instruc-
tions, so the custom-house officer brought suit against the
English. The trial was held before the English consul.
The English judge, Wilkinson, decided that there was no
objection to the importation of opium into Japan if the
custom duty was paid on it. About this matter, of course,
the Japanese government was right; but by the decision of
the English judge, she lost her suit. All the Japanese news-
papers, including the Tokio Times, published by the foreign-
ers, discussed this question of injustice severely, and the
people scattered the papers containing these articles every-
where among the foreigners in Japan, hoping to perpetuate
the memory of the outrage done to their country. The Eng-
lish Parliament did not close their eyes to this question; and
Max Stewart, a member of the Lower House, asked if it
were true that the English judge admitted the importations
of opium in spite of the treaty, and also what the English
government would do to justify itself. The English gov-
ernment could not give a satisfactory answer, and evaded
the question, saying that no official information had yet
reached it.
These are only some illustrative cases out of the many
between country and country to show the situation and
incapacity of Japan, considering her relation with foreign
powers, to maintain her rights. If cases of this kind con-
nected with individuals were counted, the number would be
astonishing.
In 1886 the English steamer called Normanton was
wrecked in the sea of Japan. Among the passengers
twenty-five Japanese were drowned. The circumstances
were heart-rending. The captain and all English passengers
were saved, but the Japanese were denied a boat or any
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JAtAK. 465
means of escape. There was complete evidence to prove
this case, and there was no reason why the captain should
not be considered a deliberate murderer. So the governor
of Hiogo sued Captain Drake; but Japan, as usual, did not
get full justice.
The latest sensation of the kind was in 1892. An English
vessel, being without ship lights, as required by the marine
law, in the night ran into the newly-arrived Japanese man-
of-war, just coming into the inland sea from France, sinking
it instantly. Most of the crew were drowned, but the cap-
tain by great effort reached the English vessel. At first no
attention was paid to him, nor any boat sent; but finally, a
rope being thrown, he saved himself, without other English
assistance, by climbing into their ship. After telling that he
was the captain of the sunken vessel, he was taken to the
third-class cabin and shamefully neglected. As usual, a suit
was brought, and as usual, again, Japan lost.
Another case: An American woman, a procuress, being
unable to live in her own country, went to Japan. After
she landed in Yokohama, about fifty young daughters of
respectable families disappeared. Every one knows that the
entire evidence is clearly against her; but judicial power
being in the hands of foreigners, she has lived safely in
Japan for over five years.
Again, the foreign roughs — mostly, perhaps, the sailors
going to the public bathhouses on pretence of bathing —
often forcibly break into the women's department, and
attempt to outrage their persons. From this horrible in-
dignity Japan gets no protection.
There is another case on record too horrible to relate here,
and of which a normal imagination can barely conceive. It
regards the treatment of a Japanese woman. Yet it is a fact,
is known all over Japan, and the perpetrators of the deed
remain unpunished.
These are but a few of the thousands of incidents of the
application of the unjust treaty by which the judicial power
of the Japanese is entirely ignored. Is the foreign hyena
who preys upon the liberty and virtue of the women of
Japan to escape, simply because foreign jurisdiction alone
controls the decision of these cases?
In Japan this question of treaty revision is discussed
every hour, every day, every month, of the year. The news-
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466 THE ABENA.
papers are full of it ; extra supplements are constantly being
issued containing nothing but discussion on this subject.
Orators and public speakers debate it everywhere. The
whole country is in constant internal ferment about it.
The apathy of the West astonishes the Japanese; their sense
of justice is outraged. The minister of the foreign affairs is
constantly being changed, in the vain hope of successful
readjustment. All Japan favors revision; even the Western
element there is not opposed. Yet where is the American
or Englishman or Frenchman who will so far unselfishly
forget his own country ae to fight on his mother soil for
another?
For forty years in Japan, the nation has been shaken by
this agitation and the terrible injustice growing out of it,
while we of the West have been collecting funds for the
support of missionaries in that country to teach the people
religion. Is it not time jiow that we begin the agitation
here ? Shall it not start among the American people, whom,
in spite of this great wrong, the Japanese love, and shall it
not spread until it strikes England and France and Holland
and Russia, that by a liberal, generous impulse justice between
nation and nation may be done ? Let these United States of
America, in memory of Commodore Perry, who first opened
this beautiful, sun-kissed country, with all its genius of art
and philosophy, to the West, be the first to set the example
of restituted rights, and claim the first glory among other
nations for the championship of Japan.
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THE MODERN CURRENCY PROBLEM THROUGH
A YISTA OP FIFTY YEARS.*
BY ALBERT BRISBANE.
At this time the great controversy in relation to the
Bank of the United States was going on. The Democratic
Party wanted to restrict our paper currency and replace it
by a specie currency. I was led to investigate the question
by hearing it constantly discussed, and in 1835 I read
Gouge's book on Banking — an ample treatment of the
question from the Democratic point of view. Having read
this work and followed the general discussions in the jpress,
I came to the conclusion — after a certain amount of reflec-
tion — that specie currency, gold and silver, was an arti-
ficial and false currency; that it had been employed by
man as a necessity in the early stages of society, because he
did not know how to discover a true currency, and had been
continued from the influence which social habits exercise on
men.
I conceived then what I believed to be a general principle
governing man's social action. Nature furnishes him with
certain primitive instrumentalities which he uses in the
beginning of his social career. She gives him, for instance,
the horse, the camel, the ox, as earners; his function is, by
his own reason, by his genius, to create the locomotive, and
to replace the rude roadway of instinct, which is the simple
levelling of the earth, by the railway. Instinct suggests
the simple needle ; genius invents the sewing machine.
The hour glass is the precursor of the chronometer ; a log,
hollowed out into a canoe, is the precursor of the steamship.
Upon the same principle man, requiring a unitary represen-
tative of wealth, — that is, a representative sign that would
stand for all the products of labor, — took by instinct the
metals that were the rarest and the most valuable, and the
* The above paper is a chapter taken from "Albert Brisbane, a Mental Biog-
raphy," just issued by the Arena Press, will be read with peculiar interest at this
moment when the very features of the currency question discussed by Mr. Brisbane
half a century ago have become the vital problem of the hour.
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468 THE AKENA.
quantities of which could not easily be increased; and so
strong has been the influence of habit and of prejudice in
favor of these so-called precious metals, together with the
abuses which arose with the first efforts to establish a paper
currency, — a currency created by the human mind, — that
men have continued the use of gold and silver. I saw that
a currency should be created which would truly represent
the products of labor — man's only real wealth. Place a
man on a desert island, I reasoned, where there are none of
the products of labor, neither food nor shelter; then suppose
a shipwreck to have thrown barrels of gold and silver at his
feet; would these precious metals have any more value for
him than the pebbles on the shore ? Of what value could
they be where there were no products for which they could
be exchanged ? Whereas, if the island were a scene of labor
and production, plenty of means of exchange could be dis-
covered, notwithstanding the total absence of gold and
silver.
I then set to work elaborating a plan for the creation
of a currency that should fairly represent the products of
industry and the labors of men — a currency that should be
created by the state in a way to withdraw it from the
monopoly of the banking classes and usurers, placing it
at the command of the real interests of the country.
Happening to be at Hamburg, N. Y., one night, at the
house of a gentleman whom I had interested in the subject,
we decided to call a meeting to discuss the currency ques-
tion. The meeting was called, and I explained my views
as clearly as I could, endeavoring to show the evils
of the prevailing system, and the need of a change.
When I had finished, a lawyer of Buffalo, a Mr. Tillinghast,
jumped up and began denouncing me as an immoral man.
" You listen to this man ! " said he. " Why, Mr. Brisbane is
building a theatre in Buffalo ; he is an irreligious, immoral
man." I admitted the charge, of course, but added that it
made no difference what I was as a man, the simple question
now before the meeting being currency. Finally, the ques-
tion being put, whether the ideas presented by me were
acceptable, the affirmative vote was unanimous.
In the spring of 1836 I called another meeting, among
the farmers of a neighboring town. At this meeting we got
up a petition to the New York Legislature, and I went to
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THE MODERN CURRENCY PROBLEM. 469
Albany and presented it. It was treated with indifference,
as a visionary scheme, and no action was taken on it.
In all that legislative body I gained but a single convert —
a senator, whose name I forget, considered, I am glad to say,
one of the ablest men in the state. I was surprised that
such a body of men could not comprehend a principle which
to me was self-evident, and that the monopoly of the cur-
rency by a class (the bankers) should be so unquestion-
ingly permitted. I saw that they had it in their power
either to give or to withhold credit, and that they really
controlled the means by which all exchange of products
took place ; that they could produce, not only disorders in
the system of industrial circulation, but that also, in what
is called legal usury, as well as in illegal usury, they levied
a prodigious tax on the industry of the nation.
Seeing that my currency theory produced no effect, I left
it aside as a mere detail in the great work of social recon-
struction. I continued, however, to write on the subject
from time to time in the newspapers, and finally, in 1860,
published a pamphlet in which I explained my theory quite
elaborately.
To show the difficulty with which this money question is
grasped, I will say that I gave a copy of my pamphlet to a
banker of Buffalo, a Mr. Spaulding, who became one of the
framers of the Greenback system soon after the breaking out
of the civil war. The next time we met he remarked, " I
have found some good things in your pamphlet." Some
months later I met him a second time. " I have read your
pamphlet again," he said, " and I find many points of inter-
est which would surprise people if they would study the
question carefully." I met him again later on, when he
returned to the subject, saying: "I have read your pam-
phlet a third time. I understand it now; but there are not
five men in Buffalo who would comprehend it." This
illustrates how difficult it is to get people to understand an
idea outside of the beaten track of popular opinion.
At length came our civil war. The necessities of gov-
ernment led to the abolition of all the state banks and to
the creation of a currency by the United States, which
national currency was furnished to the banks started anew
on the deposit of United States bonds. No interest was
charged by the government on the currency thus loaned ;
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470 THE AJRENA.
on the contrary, it paid interest on its bonds to those banks
which pledged them as collateral security. This was a meas-
ure introduced by Secretary Chase, to induce a more ready
purchase of the government bonds and to give them a higher
value in the market, thus to secure to the nation the pecu-
niary means of prosecuting the war. It was an approach to
the currency which I had proposed: it was made of paper,
not of gold or silver, and its basis was the bonds of the
United States, which bonds were secured by the entire prop-
erty of the nation. Hence it was not the inherent value of
two meta,ls which constituted the guarantee of this new
currency, but the bonds of the United States — the property-
wealth of the nation.
Had one more step been taken, my original idea would
have received half its solution. Had the government loaned
its money direct to the people, to any and every citizen who
would deposit the bonds of the nation as a security, instead
of limiting its loan to the banks (who in turn lent to the
people at a high rate of interest), the United States would
possess to-day a very fair monetary system. But in our
societies of class legislation, of monopolies and privileges,
such a great step could not be taken; for men never take
great steps unless pushed to them by dire necessity.
However, the conception of loaning money direct to the
people, instead of allowing the banks to act as intermedi-
aries, began gradually to dawn on the minds of many indi-
viduals, and the Greenback Party was formed. It affirmed
the principle that political justice and equity required the
government to loan its currency direct to the people, on the
deposit of government bonds.
My original conception was that the state should organize
vast dSpdts for the reception of all the staple products of the
country, — its grains, cotton, wool, etc., all articles of a non-
perishable character, — and take the warehousing system out
of the hands of individuals,, who inflict on the producing
classes such a vast amount of imposition; such as rating of
inferior quality first-class articles, charging high storage, etc.
• ... I proposed that the state should itself become the inter-
•mediary between the producer and the consumer. The
farmer would deposit his grain, and take a certificate based
on the value of the product stored; this certificate would
become, in a sense, money, since, being issued under the sane-
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THE MODERN CURRENCY PROBLEM. 471
tion and guarantee of the state, it would represent what
money should represent — the product of labor, rather than
the intrinsic value of two metals, or their artificial value
based on their general acceptance as a circulating medium.
If the monetary character of gold and silver should be
abolished, these metals would probably fall to half their
present value. Suppose, for instance, the banks of England
and France were suddenly to throw their hundreds of mil-
lions on the market, what would be the real manufacturing
value of all this "precious" metal for plate, jewelry, etc.?
The delusion of our political economists with regard to gold
and silver is a humiliating proof of the want of a funda-
mental analysis of a very simple problem.
I have already said that I published articles on the subject
in various papers, among others in the New York Tribune.
I tried hard to convert Greeley to the idea of a new currency,
and that, long before the institution of the Greenback system.
My efforts, however, were vain ; I could make no impression
on his practical mind. Gold and silver were the deities of
commerce and exchange; or, as Theodore Parker once de-
fined them from his pulpit, — reproving the selfisKness of
business men who upheld slavery in the name of the com-
mercial prosperity of the country, — " The golden eagle, the
silver dollar, and the copper cent are God the Father, God
the Son, and God the Holy Ghost ! "
I must say, however, that a complete revolution on the
currency question took place in Greeley's mind a few months
before his death. Somebody, it seems, whose authority had
weight, explained to him the principle of loaning direct to *
the people, and by his influence convinced Greeley of its
practicability. He wrote three articles on the subject, at
short intervals, in the Tribune, and those articles gave the
first impetus to the formation of the Greenback Party.
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SPIRITUAL PHENOMENA FROM A THEOSOPHI-
CAL VIEW.
BY ELLA WHEELER vfaLCOX.
A laboe number of intellectual and reliable people
have given their testimony in The Arena to investigations
into the occult, and proofs conclusive of the existence of
forces not yet explained by science or reason.
It seems a remarkable fact to me that not one of these
witnesses has pursued his investigations on a theosophical
basis. For every puzzle presented in the interesting papers
which have appeared in The Arena, theosophy holds the
key. Over every mystery shrouded in darkness, it holds the
torchlight of common sense. It is a great misfortune that
many 'of the leaders of the theosophical movement in
America have chosen to represent this philosophy as at
variance with Christianity, spiritualism, and mental science,
when, in fact, it is the parent of the essence of all three.
Mental science, which teaches the power of spirit over
matter, is one finger of the great body of theosophy. Why
should the body despise the fingers? Though the fingers
may say, " I am the whole," the body knows the assertion is
made in ignorance; and to despise the good work done by
this one finger, is unworthy of the body.
While Christianity in its modern phase may oppose
theosophy, yet its real essence, " Love thy neighbor as thy-
self," and " Do unto others as you would that they should
do to you," is the core of theosophy, as taught by Buddha
long before Christ came upon earth. The central thought
on which all great religions are founded is the same from
the beginning of the universe to the present day, and the
central thought is the kernel of meat in the hard nuts of
creeds.
Spiritualism is merely the ante-room to the vast cathedral
of the " wisdom religion." It seems to me that the Society
for Psychical Research has halted in this dimly lighted ante-
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SPIRITUAL PHENOMENA. 473
room, instead of proceeding into the grand chambers beyond,
lighted by truth's brilliant rays.
I do not hesitate to state that only the ignorant, the
egotist, or the fool to-day disputes the fact that spiritualism
is fpunded on a great truth; but the man who investigates
spiritualism by following after mediums and attending
stances^ is a still greater fool, unless he is armed with such
defensive knowledge as theosophy alone can give. The
skilled workman can use edged tools with benefit to himself
and others; but the thoughtless, untaught child needs to let
them alone.
To investigate so-called spiritual phenomena, we need first
to realize that death does not permit a soul to step from this
brief earth life into another life which is final and eternal.
We might as well suppose that the traveller who goes on
board a ship, stays forever on that* ship, instead of journey-
ing in many lands; or that an old, cast-off suit of clothes
which he may leave upon the ship, is all that remains of
him.
Many a " sensitive " sees an apparition which is as lacking
in spirit and intelligence as an old suit of clothes ; and most
mediums communicate with these shells which once held the
spirit. Now and then we find one who can call back some
spirit which has not broken all earthly ties, and which is
more strongly attracted by the interests it left behind than
those which urge it onward.
We are surrounded by the astral light, in which are photo-
graphed all thoughts, words, and deeds ever committed by
us. The possessor of the sixth sense (clairvoyant vision) is
like one who should step into a vast photograph gallery
whose walls were composed of the negatives of its patrons.
He has but to look about him to see who has been there, and
in what attitudes they were pictured ; and yet it is easy to
make a mistake in these negatives.
Sometimes one glass holds two or three pictures, or a
composite portrait, and the gazer becomes confused. The
trance medium sees more clearly, frequently, than the clair-
voyant ; but both make the mistake of thinking they see the
spirit of a dead friend, when they often see only this dim
negative in the astral light, while the spirit has gone on
into realms where the most clear-9eeing vision cannot
penetrate.
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474 THE ARENA.
The dead who die in selfishness, avarice, and lust, and
with the higher spiritual qualities^ dormant, hover about the
borders of this astral world, and are eager to communicate
with earth. The ignorant " investigator of the occult " not
only retards their final spiritual progress by placing himself
in reach of them, but he subjects himself to their evil
influences, and is liable to unhealthful thoughts, feelings,
and impulses, heretofore unknown to him, after frequenting
the stance room.
Besides these earth-bound spirits, the astral world or the
one adjacent contains the " body of desire," which the spirit
drops behind it in its upward flight, just as it dropped its
body of clay in the grave. This " body of desire " is what
I referred to in the beginning as a cast-off suit of clothes.
It contains a certain amount of memory and intelligence,
which it received from the spirit during life, even after that
spirit goes on about its business.
I remember once at school, when quite a little girl, of
amusing myself with a piece of magnetic ore from which I
charged a steel pen. Presently the pen itself became so
magnetized that I was able to lift a cluster of pens upon its
point. In a short time, however, this power passed away
from it when no longer associated with the magnet.
It is exactly so with this " body of desire," an ethereal
double of the physical body. It becomes magnetized from
the spirit, and retains this magnetism some time after the
spirit has gone. And it is this deceptive illusion which
mediums most frequently encounter in the trance state, and
which so puzzles and pains sorrowing friends by the mixture
of truth and lies, sense and absurdity, in its " messages."
This " body of desire " will give a medium the exact name
of some one who has died — a name you are positive she
cannot know herself. It will then instruct her to give you
the most nonsensical, undignified, and silly message, when
you are hungering for counsel and advice on important
subjects ; and just as you are turning away in despair and
disgust, you are puzzled by a reference to a secret known
only to yourself and the dead. Then you wait, or go again
and again, for some sensible, encouraging, or wise word of
advice and sympathy, but it does not come; for it is only the
cast-off, baser part of your friend who is talking to you,
actuated by a sort of automatic memory and a remnant of
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SPIRITUAL PHENOMENA. 475
intelligence. Let it alone and it will decay. Fill it with
the magnetism of mediums, and it will live on and on, but
the mediums will lose health, morals, and reason.
I have experimented with many " sensitives," and I have
found in all my experience but one whom I believed to be in
any way associated with the higher influences. But I have
consulted many who proved to me beyond question the truth
of the theory of the " body of desire " and that of pictures
in the astral light. Yet the experiences of a few of my
acquaintances prove to me conclusively that the spirit of one
who lived a good life may and does sometimes send valuable
messages to those who remain on earth.
A young lady friend of mine lost her father very suddenly.
He died in the street without having a moment's warning.
His business affairs were in an unsettled state, and he had
often told this daughter that before he died he wished to
arrange his financial matters to protect her interests. Three
years after his death, the young woman was visiting an aunt
and uncle in a distant town. Both were in usual health.
One evening a strange woman called and asked to see Miss
A. After considerable hesitation, she said : " I am a newly
developed writing medium. During the last few days every
message which has come to me has been to Miss A. I did
not know who you were, had never heard of you ; but the
influence said you were visiting here, and I must see you
and tell you not to go away ; that a great deal of money
depended upon your staying here; also that there were
papers in a safe which you ought to have, as they would
bring you money. But over and over it urged you to stay
and not go away, as you contemplate. The influence signed
himself Mr. A., and said he was your father."
Miss A. regarded the woman as a crank and an impostor,
and paid no attention to her talk. Much against the wishes
of her aunt and uncle, she went away in a few days, and
some weeks later she visited me and related these facts.
While she was under my roof, word came of the sudden
death of her aunt and uncle. They were childless and
wealthy. The letter that brought the news of their death
said: " Had you remained with them a few weeks longer, you
would have inherited all their money; but they were so dis-
pleased with you for going away, that they left it to distant
relatives."
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476 THE ABBNA.
There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that the
spirit of Mr. A. is unable to cut loose wholly from earth,
through his anxiety regarding his daughter, and that he
made a strenuous effort to have her inherit the property of
the aunt and uncle whose death he foresaw.
Still another case which came under my personal observa-
tion proves to me the positive return of the spirits of the
dead, with the desire to warn and benefit some one who
remains on earth. But these cases are rare, when compared
with the innumerable evidences of the pictures in the astral
light and the bodies of desire which torment and tease, but
do not benefit the seeker after truth, unless he is armed with
knowledge: a knowledge within the reach of all who are
willing to toil for it, and a knowledge which makes us more
reverent toward the Creator, more tender toward humanity,
more hopeful of the ultimate good toward which the universe
is tending, and more confident of our powers to hasten that
good; a knowledge which reveals to every man the Christ
within himself, who may become a saviour of the world if
he bo wills it, and is willing to work and live for that
purpose ; a knowledge which is the marriage tie between
Science and Religion, and an armor of strength to every soul
who seeks and finds it.
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A STUDY OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
BY B. P. POWELL.
Two men stand pre-eminent in history in the middle of
the eighteenth century as intellectual forces shaping events
preliminary to the establishment of our republic. These were
Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine. Colonial familiarity
has handed down one of these as Ben, the other as Tom, as
the older Adams was also Sam. It is not easy to habilitate
Ben, in the language of Bancroft, as the greatest diplomatist
of the eighteenth century, or Tom as the man who pre-
cipitated the Declaration of Independence, and carried the
armies through the crisis of almost total despair. Yet it is
true that during our Revolution, if never at any other period,
the pen was mightier than the sword. The creation of the
republic was not a possibility by any force of arms that we
possessed, or, indeed, possible at all by any other power than
that of reason and diplomacy.
The difficulty of a study of Franklin is intensified by the
fact that he was the most-sided man that ever appeared in
our history, if not, indeed, in history at all. To be compre-
hended we must know him, not only as diplomatist, but as
the foremost scientist in the world ; a most remarkable finan-
cier and business manager; an author whose work has a
fixed place among the higher classics; a philosopher who
found rank with Voltaire and Leibnitz ; as Kant expressed
it, "the Prometheus of modern days." John Adams, whose
jealousy was irrepressible, wrote from Paris that Franklin's
reputation was " more universal than that of Newton." Nor
do we find our task minified by the fact that Franklin was a
man as simple as he was great, as childlike as he was philo-
sophic. Like Lincoln, he loved a joke, but, unlike Lincoln,
he put his jokes into state papers. It has been hinted that
for this reason no great historic document of the period was
intrusted to his pen. His economy was not only political,
it was domestic; and in "Poor Richard" popular estima-
477
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478 THE ARENA.
tion cannot easily recognize the controlling mind of the
world's affairs and the builder of democracy. He wrote
almanacs instead of constitutions. He was as marked for
his toleration in theology as for his democracy in statecraft.
In both he was clearsighted and even prophetic, far beyond
his age.
The famous scene in the Academy of Sciences, when
he and Voltaire were brought forward dramatically before
the most eminent scholars of Europe, and embraced, as
emblematic of the wedding of two worlds in the cause of
freedom, was far from being the embrace of men of similar
aim and spirit. The little, weazened, bright-eyed poet of
Verney hated the old ; the rotund and serene American
loved the new. Voltaire flourished in the dust of destroyed
opinions; Franklin sought to build a system of morals that
might be universal for enlightened peoples. His favorite
scheme, projected in early 'life, worked at in his prime, and
never quite given over till age enfeebled him, was to write
44 The Art of Virtue," a system of morals; a plan which
seems only now about to be worked out and engrafted on
our scheme of both secular and religious education. Shrewd
and masterly as a business man, he saw also that underneath
all human progress must lie the power of society to construct
character.
But it is my present purpose to study Franklin only as a
diplomatist — the man whose pen and tongue matched the
sword of Washington. Prerequisite to such a study it is
necessary to comprehend his heredity, both in family and in
commonwealth. The not over-generous soil of New England
had set the religious refugees of Europe upon new lines of
evolution. The Puritans, who had developed the most
marvellous other-worldliness, were compelled by nature to
develop as absorbing worldliness. Equally good at praying
and at bargaining, they learned to make virtues of necessities
and piety of economics. They moralized over corn-huskings,
and said ten minutes' grace over a salted mackerel with
pumpkin pie. Thanksgiving was a happy commingling of
stomach and " heart," wherein chicken pie was made to
harmonize with two-hour sermons and serious reflections
about a day of judgment. Yet their digestion was good.
This was the sort of heredity that Franklin received — wise,
penny-wise, and pious after the excellent manner of the
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A STUDY OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 479
Mayflower. Being a New Englander, whatever else he did,
he never failed to preach. He could not escape the control-
ling conviction that the chief end of life is salvation; but in
his creed, salvation pertained less to the soul than to the
pocket. He married righteousness to political economy.
His position as a diplomat was always shaded by his character
as a philosopher. His home-spun suit and simplicity were
invaluable adjuncts to his winning logic.
We must also ascribe to heredity the extremely construc-
tive ability of Franklin. It was an era of " off-clearings "
in general. Medievalism, since Erasmus and Luther, had
been gaping open in great seams. Feudalism had yielded to
monarchy, and monarchy was on trial. Voltaire had gone a
rifle's range further than Calvin, and Roger Williams' soul
was in the ascendant with William Pitt. Vague ideas of
democracy and human equality were abroad. Largely the
period was destructive, but Anglo-Saxon sturdiness has
always preferred construction. Franklin was from first to
last a builder. He planned a " Union of the Colonies " and
anticipated a new ecclesiasticism, with equal facility. He
invented the first American stove, and set up the first light-
ning rod. He founded a philosophical society, and the
University of Pennsylvania. He was equally successful as
printer, editor, and author, making the press to be the
foremost power in America. He was brilliant as a conver-
sationalist; and as a letter writer, he was one of the most
renowned in an age devoted to wit and philosophy in
correspondence. He was no greater as a writer than as a
diplomatist, and in neither of these ways surpassed his
achievements in science. His early life was full of force,
badly or unequally directed; and for a time he seemed about
to become a social pest, dissolute and wasted. But out of
the chaos of contending influences he emerged, in due time,
with power still to lead the age in every department of
thought, and to anticipate a future age in matters both of
public and private importance — in education, in research, in
toleration, and in constructive institutions of government.
To comprehend Franklin as a patriot and diplomatist, we
must also understand the exact stage of the contention for
popular rights. The Magna Charta of 1200 had jested till
1700, before being followed by the Bill of Rights. But
ecclesiastical reformation on the continent had exercised a
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480 THE ARENA.
vital reaction on the state. Democracy was in the air, but
England and all Europe sincerely believed in the divine right
of kings and of the aristocracy. Events only led or com-
pelled the American colonies to reject the idea of Dei gratia
and stand for the principle vozpopuli, vox Dei. At the open-
ing of the contention between the colonies and the parent
country, there was no thought of rebelling against monarchy.
Curiously the grievance of the Americans was wholly with
the representative body of government, the Parliament.
" You are not our representatives," said Sam Adams. " We
have no representation anywhere in government," said Otis.
Lord Mansfield answered: "No one is represented in special,
but only in general. You are virtually represented by every
member of Parliament." " The Americans are right," said
Pitt and Camden; but when it came to vote, there were but
five with Pitt. The English doctrine remains to this day
"virtual representation." The American doctrine soon
became " actual representation," and without that no power
to levy taxes. And this doctrine of actual representation is
still leavening society, and is at the bottom of the demand
for female suffrage. Those who dance must pay for the
fiddler, and those who pay may dance.
Franklin, while on his first mission to England, was for a
long time very warm in his good-will for George III. " The
sovereignty of the crown," he said, "I understand. The
sovereignty of the British legislature out of Britain I do not
understand. We are free subjects of the king ; and fellow-
subjects of his dominions are not sovereigns over fellow-sub-
jects in any other part."
The American people were slow to become disloyal; they
were hot for a principle of government before they were able
to become anti-royalists. To the last a large minority
remained monarchists, and over one hundred thousand left
the country rather than forsake the king. Even the estab-
lishment of a republic did not create a universal conviction
of democracy. Fisher Ames wrote: "A democracy cannot
last. Its nature ordains that it shall change into a military
despotism, as of all governments the most prone to shift its
head and the slowest to mend its vices." "Hamilton
believed," says Morris, " that our administration would be
enfeebled progressively at each new election, and become at
last contemptible." Who shall wonder ? Who shall blame ?
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• A STtTDY OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 481
The problem of popular government was novel beyond prece-
dent, and it involved the vastest evolution since society was
organized. To trust the people, or not to trust the people —
that was what must be settled. Franklin, when at last he
saw that the royal power was involved in the contest with
Britain, took his position with the people, and so preceded
the party which Jefferson soon headed against the aristo-
crats, and succeeded in placing in permanent control of the
country.
The great Saxon race at this point divided asunder in their
contest against prerogative. Led by circumstances unfore-
seen, the Americans developed a system of popular govern-
ment resting entirely on the good faith of the people. Out
of the seething sprang, as by inspiration, the principle enun-
ciated in the Declaration of Independence — that all men
are born with equal rights. The war closed with English
people still strong in the idea of inequality of rights by
birth ; while the United States has based its prosperity on
the opposite doctrine. Carlyle summed up British sentiment
when he wrote, "Democracy will prevail when men believe
the vote of Judas as good as that of Jesus Christ." But
Wendell Phillips answered, u The right to choose your gov-
ernor rests on precisely the same foundation as the right to
choose your own religion."
Franklin believed in diplomacy as stronger than the sword.
His own history gave him much warrant for this. He was
first sent abroad by the state of Pennsylvania, in the popular
struggle to compel the successors of William Penn, the pro-
prietaries of the colony, to pay their share of the taxes.
These dignitaries lived in England, and drew their annual
revenue of two hundred thousand dollars from the vast
American estate granted to Penn, but refused to pay taxes
on their private lands. They appointed the governor, and
the people selected their assemblymen; but the governor
could get his salary only by vote of the Assembly. It became
a fair field for contention, and not seldom a deadlock.
In 1757 Franklin was selected to cross the ocean, in order
to seek redress from Parliament, also to induce the king to
resume the province of Pennsylvania as his own. So it
happened that the very nature of this errand started out the
colonial diplomatist as a royalist. This visit of Franklin to
the old country was exceedingly exasperating, for he stood
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482 THE ABENA.
almost alone, representing an insignificant colony which was
looked upon purely as British property. He had no prestige,
no powerful nation to back him, no friends to assist. Looked
at from this standpoint, the result was the most remarkable
achievement of his career as a representative ; for after vex-
atious delays and gross insults, he succeeded in bringing
about very nearly what Pennsylvania desired. The king and
Parliament emphatically sided with the proprietaries, bluntly
suggesting that the real aim of the colonists was "to estab-
lish a democracy in place of his majesty's government." But
at the very last Lord Mansfield took Franklin aside, and
entered into a personal agreement with him that the demand
of the colonists should be granted, on certain conditions, to
which Franklin readily agreed.
The result was so remarkable that it is not surprising that
Franklin became a still more devout devotee of diplomacy.
It was a work of three years ; but then it was worth three
years' time that the people should triumph. When he reached
home the citizens of Philadelphia met him with a warm
welcome ; the Assembly voted him fifteen thousand dollars, to
cover his expenses ; and England appointed his son governor
of New Jersey.
Franklin's second mission to England was by appointment
of the same colony, and on a like errand. He was com-
missioned to urge a total change of government from a pro-
prietary to a royal. This time three hundred mounted citi-
zens escorted him down the river to his ship. He reached
England at the close of 1764. It was the very time when
the British Parliament began to crowd colonial taxation, in
order to aid in covering its expenses during the war with
France. The culmination was the Stamp Act. Whatever
excuse the English people had for their course toward the
colonies, the latter saw none ; and the majority of the people
would consider none. Otis, Sam Adams, and Patrick Henry
raised a storm that seemed tp Franklin to be a tempest in a
teapot. He was too cool-headed to sympathize with rash
action. He believed with all his nature in diplomacy,
and this he undertook at first by uniting in compromise
propositions.
But the Philadelphians soon gave him to understand that
diplomacy must be turned in another direction. They mobbed
his family, and burned him in effigy. He at once shifted his
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A STUDY OF BENJAMIN FBANKLIN. 483
position. The mission on which he was sent was so insig-
nificant that it was lost sight of. He became, by general
consent, representative of all the American colonies. The
people of the provinces were in dead earnest; that was clear.
They ceased to eat lamb, so that more wool might be grown,
and home-spun clothes be made and worn. They would
retaliate on English trade. The great question was now
shaping itself, " No taxation without representation." But
you are represented, answered .Parliament ; we all represent
you. Pitt sided with the colonies, saying : " The Americans
are not the bastards of England, but the sons." u Virtual
representation is a contemptible idea."
In February, 1766, Franklin was summoned by Parliament
to give testimony as to the state and temper of the colonies,
and what measures of pacification would be adopted. He
had now developed into an uncompromising leader of the
patriots, but he had no thought of independence or of war.
His examination was one of the most able and brilliant in
history. One passage only will suffice to give the logic and
spirit of his position: " The Parliament of Great Britain
has not, never had, and of right never can have, without con-
sent given, either before or after, power to make laws of
sufficient force to bind the subjects of America in any case
whatever, and particularly in taxation. We are free sub-
jects of the king, and fellow-subjects of his dominions are
not sovereigns over fellow-subjects in any other part." Still
he remained royalist.
In 1769 he wrote, " I hope nothing that has happened or
that may happen will diminish in the least our loyalty to our
sovereign, or affection for his nation in general." In 1770
he counselled the colonies to be true to the excellent king.
44 1 can scarce conceive a king of better disposition." So far
he is a true diplomatist, believing the tongue more powerful
than the sword. But soon he writes, 44 Between you and me,
the late measures have been, I suspect, very much the king's."
Meanwhile the Stamp Act was abolished, mainly by the
influence of Franklin. The citizens of Philadelphia had a
large barge built, forty feet long, which they named Franklin,
and carried it in a great procession, firing salutes from it as
they marched. By 1770 Franklin was agent, by formal
appointment, of not only Pennsylvania, but Massachusetts,
Georgia, and New Jersey,
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484 THE ARENA.
The Stamp Act out of the way, it looked for a time as if
the ferment would end, and harmony be restored. Franklin
stood steadily as peacemaker, calmly advising both parties.
He complained that he suffered on both sides — in England
being suspected of being too much an American, in Amer-
ica of being too much an Englishman. A grand triumph
came to encourage him. Earl Hillsborough was secretary of
state for the colonies, under Lord North. He insulted our
agent from the outset, and did it grossly. Franklin presented
a plan to the Parliament for the creation of a great frontier
to the west of the colonies, which should consist of twenty-
three millions of acres, these to be granted by England to
America. Hillsborough opposed the measure hotly ; but he
was worsted in his plans, and, flying into a rage, resigned.
This raised Franklin considerably in popular estimation ;
and he was called on to nominate the earl's successor, which
he did.
In 1773 began the quarrel in Massachusetts with Governor
Hutchinson. The colonial assemblies were growing quite
independent. Franklin advised Parliament not to hear too
much ; that in reality America was loyal. " It is words
only," he said. He had constantly urged that, in his opinion,
44 If the colonies were restored to the state they were in
before the Stamp Act, they would be satisfied." As late as
1774 he was still diplomatically arguing that the war was
only a ministerial one, and could be stopped by wise parlia-
mentary and cabinet action ; but he began to confess that,
if he were an Englishman, he could not see what step might
be taken to diminish the mischief. He was evidently in his
mind convinced the day was passed for healing the bitterness.
He was ready for bloodshed, if it must come — a man of
terrible decision and undying hate, when hope for honorable
treatment was past. As far back as 1766, when the ques-
tion of the Stamp Act was still open, he had said: u I have
some little property in America. I will freely spend nineteen
shillings in the pound to defend my right of giving or refus-
ing the other shilling. And after all, if I cannot defend that
right, I can retire cheerfully with my family into the bound-
less woods of America, which are sure to afford freedom and
subsistence to any man who can bait a hook or pull a trig-
ger." David Crockett was hardly the model after which
Franklin would have chosen to conform his life ; but that he
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A STUDY OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 485
had Crockett's stuff in him for all emergencies, is beyond
question. But his plan was still of the Seward, Union-
preserving sort. He would have the colonies refuse to buy
a pound of tea, or whatever else involved payment of odious
taxes. u If we continue firm, and persist in the non-consump-
tion agreement, this adverse ministry cannot possibly last
another year." He thought a cup of tea, the cost of which
helped to pay the salaries of tyrants, would "choke any
decent American."
It was well we had exactly this man at that time in that
place. The colonies did not need precipitating before due
time into war. They were steadily teing consolidated and
unified. A national spirit was taking the place of the
colonial. But the day of action was close at hand. Troops
had been sent over to Boston. Franklin bitterly complained
of this. " Americans advised it," replied an official. " It
cannot be," said Franklin. " I will prove it," was the reply;
and in a few days a bundle of letters from Governor Hutch-
inson and Lieutenant-Governor Oliver was handed to Frank-
lin. These he sent to America for examination but not
for publication, as he asserted; but the recipient did pub-
lish them. This incensed the British government beyond
measure.
In January, 1774, Franklin was cited to appear before the
Lords of the Committee for Plantation Affairs. I suppose
a more cowardly assault on a man unable to defend himself
was never made by a government; more detestable abuse was
never poured over a man who deserved none of it. Dr.
Priestley, who was present, said, " The real object of the
court was to insult Dr. Franklin." Franklin showed not a
sign of rage or even indignation, but he stood calmly
unmoved and let them bark on. Only when he went home,
he put away the coat he had on, and never wore it again
until he sat as commissioner to sign the treaty that confessed
the independence of the United States.
The king now tumbled him out of his office of postmaster-
general of the United States, and there was a growl of trea-
son raised throughout England. He was warned that if a
blow should be struck in New England he would be doubt-
less seized. Lord Chatham stood firmly by him, as did Sir
Thomas Walpole. Evidently affairs had passed all limits of
peace, although war was not yet formally declared.
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486 THE ABENA.
From this hour the diplomat became as bitter a foe as Eng-
land ever had, and th$ most dangerous. Had the British
ministers been large enough to be both honest and honorable,
and made fast friendship with Franklin, the war of the Rev-
olution would have been a failure. They did undertake to
bribe him, as they had undertaken before; but they mistook
the man. In March, 1775, he started for home, having first
handed to Mr. Walpole a document in which, as agent of the
colonies, he demanded for them, of the British government,
reparation for injuries done by the blockade of Boston, and
closing thus: "I give notice that satisfaction will probably
one day be demanded for all the injuries that may be done
and suffered in the execution of the fisheries act; depriving
the colonies of just rights; and that the injustice of the pro-
ceeding is likely to give such umbrage to all the colonies that
in no future war, either a man or a shilling will be obtained
from any of them till full satisfaction be made as aforesaid."
This was as good as a declaration of war. Walpole hustled
him out of England as quickly as possible, to prevent his
arrest.
Franklin was drilled well by the English people, not only
to hate them, but to act as the most skilful of diplomatists
against them in case of war. Lexington and Concord were
fought while he was on mid-ocean. He landed, to find the
two countries locked in a struggle of blood. Washington
was in command, and the Provincial Congress was assembled.
Franklin was at once elected a delegate. A nation was to be
born. Everything was to be done de novo. The air was
full, not only of independence, but of revolution. Democ-
racy was a problem. There was not even a cradle for the
government, whenever born; neither money nor financial
system. Many hung back from absolute independence.
Pennsylvania formed a separate government. New England
threatened a league by herself. The confederacy that fol-
lowed was loose at every joint; not strong enough to have
endured a year of peace; barely held together by war. But
everything was redeemed by that magnificent document,
the Declaration of Independence — a glorious inheritance for
a free people ; a standard about which the sentiment of sixty-
five millions of Americans still rally; the proclamation of
philosophers defying brute force. It was at this point that
Franklin and Jefferson first became co-operators and friends.
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A STUDY OF BENJAMIN FBANKLIN. 487
Lord Howe arrived in July. He wished to renew diplo-
matic discussion. He was a friend of Franklin in England,
and a conciliator. Franklin was allowed to reply. He closed
by saying: " I know your great motive, in coming hither,
was the hope of being instrumental in a reconciliation; and
I believe that when you find that impossible, on any terms
given you to propose, you will relinquish so odious a com-
mand, and return to a more honorable private station."
Now followed as fine a bit of negotiation as any Frank-
lin was ever engaged in, and it called for all his wit and
versatility. It was concluded by Congress to send delegates
to meet Lord Howe and his brother, who claimed pleni-
potentiary powers for treaty. At the conference Howe was
conciliatory and polite as he was generous. He wished,
however, to treat " back of the step of independency."
Franklin answered : " Forces have been sent out, and towns
have been burnt. We cannot expect happiness under the
domination of Great Britain. All former attachments are
obliterated."
It was critical that Lord Howe should be met in some
manner by Congress, for the land was full of Tories. All
the patriots had not yet signed, even in spirit, a declaration
of independence. It was equally important that no yielding
of one jot of ground should be apparent. The conference
was held; it was over with. There was no more diplomatic
danger from smooth tongues and honeyed pens. Bayonets
and bullets at last became a necessity.
1 France and England were natural enemies; it followed
that France and America became artificial friends. In Sep-
tember of 1776, Franklin, then seventy years of age, was
despatched as ambassador to the Court at Versailles. The
English raged and threatened war if he was received ; but
the French welcomed him with a frenzy of enthusiasm.
They praised him from top to toe. They admired even his
weaknesses. His pictures were everywhere. The situation
was one of extraordinary delicacy. One injudicious word
or mistaken step, and he would have spoiled all. But he
never made a mistake. He was neither too fast nor too slow.
He was cool, cautious, and yet frank and prompt. I believe
the very secret of his success as a diplomatist, however, was
honesty. His versatility enabled him to read men and adapt
himself to circumstances; but he was felt to be, above all,
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488 THE ARENA.
adherent to principles. His power of generalization had been
shown in science; it was equally remarkable in politics. He
foresaw the far-reaching consequences of events. He wrote
that America was sure of receiving an enormous access of
families as soon as independence should be established. " Our
cause is the cause of all mankind. It is a glorious task
assigned to us by Providence."
Precisely what Franklin did not do in his French embas-
sage would be more easily stated than what he did do. A
treaty of alliance was of course the object, in brief, of his
commission. But it was the policy of the French government
to aid by comfort instead of open effort and direct treaty
offensive.
In 1777 Burgoyne was captured. Austin was despatched
from America to tell Franklin. Now followed the strangest
episode of the Revolution. Franklin forwarded this same
messenger over the channel, and he was actually received by
men high in rank. He was domesticated with the Earl of
Shelburne ; introduced to the Prince of Wales, and dined by
a large Parliamentary "opposition." He did excellent ser-
vice. January, 1778, Mr. Gerard informed Franklin that the
government had concluded to form a treaty of friendship and
commercial alliance with the colonies. Exactly as the news
of the surrender of Burgoyne broke upon England, came
also intimations of the French treaty.
Then followed one of the most astounding periods of di-
plomacy ever recorded. Lord North sent word to Franklin
that if he would come over to England, he could obtain a
treaty on satisfactory terms. Parliament voted it had no
intention of taxing the colonies without representation ; it
also passed a bill to send commissioners to treat with Con-
gress or with Washington, to order a truce, to suspend laws,
to grant pardons and rewards. Fox screamed out, " You are
ten days too late." The French had already formed a treaty
with America. Franklin was victor. He was, in fact, at
that moment the most important man in Europe. France
hurried off a frigate to carry the news of a treaty; England
despatched another, close after, with all speed, hoping to get
ahead with news of its conciliatory temper. Franklin
laughed. The king of France sent for him; and when pre-
sented to Louis, the latter said: "I wish Congress to be
assured of my friendship. I beg leave also to say that I am
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A STUDY OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 489
exceedingly pleased, in particular, with your own conduct
during your residence in my kingdom."
Franklin went to the royal reception without any formal
dress, with a white hat under his arm instead of a sword ;
and his white hair flowed freely without a wig. The French
people went wild with enthusiasm over his republican sim-
plicity. The government was nobly generous to the young
republic, and took no mean advantage of the predominance
of France in the league ; Franklin took occasion of his pres-
tige to secure the passage of a great international law allow-
ing free ships to carry goods freely and passengers also —
soldiers of the enemy only excepted. He urged Congress
not hereafter to molest foreign ships, but to accord prompt
adhesion to Russia's proposition of " an armed neutrality for
the protection of the liberty of commerce." Thus began the
establishment, not only of an American republic but a
republic of the high seas. To-day the waters of the earth
are a great commonwealth of the peoples, covering two thirds
of the globe.
But Franklin's work was not done ; it was only now that
it could be done. Fate was against England, and France
came out ahead. Franklin had no disposition to lighten the
blow for our mother country. He despatched John Paul
Jones, in hopes of burning Liverpool or Glasgow, — and "save
blood elsewhere." Meanwhile financial burdens were neces-
sarily greater, the needs of Congress increasing. The great
diplomatist was exactly equal to the occasion. He succeeded,
in the face of difficulties apparently insurmountable, in bor-
rowing large sums, and in meeting all the drafts made on him
by Congress. He had to fit out his own cruisers, and, indeed,
carry the expenses of all other American representatives
in Europe. France was poor. Her treasury was almost
always overdrawn. Yet every time Franklin, protesting and
sometimes sharply reprimanding, managed to meet all need-
ful calls. Every week the bills ranged from two hundred
thousand dollars down to small affairs of daily expense. Jay
was in Spain to secure a loan, but he had to appeal to Frank-
lin to pay his current expenses for him. So the work of
this mighty man culminated. He stood for a nation not yet
created — for a Congress without power. Himself an ambas-
sador without a country, he made a treaty with France; he
blockaded the ports <Jf England ; he sent money to sustain
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490 THE ABENA.
the army of Washington, he supported the American repre-
sentatives at other courts; he created international treaties.
At that moment Washington was the great man of the
new world; Franklin of the old world — and both were
Americans.
He is said to have been vain. It was impossible for men
like Lee and Deane and feard, or even John Adams, to
measure such a man. They are therefore not blamable for
false estimates. He was fond of friends, and of the high
esteem of the world ; but he endured without perturbation
the assaults of the great and the stings of the small; nor is
there on record an instance where his vanity or his resent-
ment led him .to lose his prudence as an ambassador or his
skill as a negotiator.
The war was now over. The man who in 1776 signed the
Declaration of Independence with the remark, "We must
hang together or we shall all hang separate," now signed,
not only the Treaty of Peace with England, but treaty after
treaty between the United States and foreign governments.
In 1784 Jefferson reached Paris, and Franklin was allowed
to return home. " Come you," they said to Jefferson, " to
replace Doctor Franklin? " He replied, " No one can replace
him; I am only his successor." The greatest American
statesman thus followed as minister to France the greatest
American diplomatist. They were a well-mated pair. Each
approached the rights of man on a different road, but they
stood on a common platform. Franklin felt the wrongs of
his fellow-men ; Jefferson had faith in great human principles.
They were both eminently democratic in manners, and pop-
ular in their sentiments. Besides Washington, no other man
so eminently won the hearts of the people. With admirable
grace Mr. Lodge says of Franklin, " He moved with an easy
and assured step, with a poise and balance which nothing
could shake, among the great men of the world ; he stood
before kings and princes and courtiers unmoved and unawed.
He was stl-ongly averse to breaking with England; but when
the war came, he was the one man who could go forth and
represent to Europe the new nationality without a touch of
the colonist about him. He met them all, great ministers
and great sovereigns, on a common ground, as if the colonies
of yesterday had been an independent nation for generations."
In the summer of 1785 Franklin returned to America.
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A STUDY OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 491
He left France with the best regard of her people and her
king. He met at home a welcome beyond measure enthusi-
astic. He was elected governor of Pennsylvania, and in
1787 a member of the Constitutional Convention. He was
thus at the laying of the corner stone of the new nation in
July, 1776; and he assisted in the completion of the grand
idea of a federated, democratic republic eleven years later —
" All of which he saw; and a very large part of which he
was."
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THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CASE.
Verdict No. III.
[In this issue we give the decisions of Rev. M. J. Savage,
General Marcus J. Wright, L. L. Lawrence, William E. Sheldon,
George Makepeace Towle, and Mrs. Mary A. Livermore. All
jurors rendering opinions in this paper vote for the defendant
excepting Mrs. Livermore, who, while not expressing an opinion
in favor of Bacon, holds that the evidence advanced proves that
some one other than William Shakespeare wrote the plays
attributed to him.]
I. BEV. M. J. SAVAGE.
It is said that a man once asked which of two roads to take,
and was told that it didn't make much difference ; for whichever
he took, he'd wish he had taken the other. So, as I study the
Shakespeare-Bacon controversy, I find myself in difficulty on
either theory. The combatants make me think of the daily
battles among the immortals in Valhalla. All, on both sides, are
slain every day; all are ready to begin again early the next
morning.
In the summer of 1880 I stood with a legal friend by the grave
of Shakespeare in the church at Stratford. My friend remained
for a moment in deep thought, and then broke out with, " Savage,
you'll never make me believe that the man who wrote those
plays is the same man as the one who left his second-best bed-
stead to Ann Hathaway."
That, of course, is chiefly a sentimental consideration. But —
to knowledge I " How knoweth this man letters, having never
learned?" Then, the absence even of one decent autograph of
the man who was said to have written the plays without erasure
or blot ! Why did he show no care for his literary children ?
Why are the six years of his retirement at Stratford barren of
everything that even hints a literary taste ? These are sugges-
tions only of many questions that all thoughtful people must ask.
On the other hand, when we turn to Bacon, we confess, of
course, that he possessed the knowledge, the eloquence, the wit.
I cannot think that the anti-Bacon men satisfactorily explain the
reference to the " concealed poet," or to the prodigious wit that
goes by another name.
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THE BACON-SHAKESPEAEE CASE. 493
But when I turn to the other side, I am nonplussed. This
problem is very like the old one, as to what would happen if an
irresistible force should come in contact with an immovable
body. If Bacon wrote the plays, why does he not arrange some
way (other than a cipher which can be disputed and laughed at)
for letting the world know it ? And as I read the work of the
alleged poet who is not " concealed," I am sure that the man
who can be so inspired in the one case, could not possibly be
wooden in the other.
Considering, then, all « the difficulties on both sides, I find
myself coming to this conclusion : William Shakespeare is in
possession. The probabilities, then, are in his favor. The
Baconians must make an overwhelmingly strong case in order to
dispossess the traditional proprietor. I cannot think the case
is strong enough to warrant an ejectment. So I vote for
Shakespeare. M. J. Savage.
Mr. Savage renders his verdict for the defendant.
n. GENERAL MARCUS J. WRIGHT.
I have read with great interest and care the arguments and
evidence published in The Arena in the celebrated case of
Bacon vs. Shakespeare, and have weighed both testimony and
arguments carefully and impartially ; and as a juror in the case,
I render my verdict in favor of the defendant, Shakespeare.
Marcus J. Wright.
Marcus J. Wright — verdict in favor of defendant.
HI. L. L. LAWRENCE, ESQ.
1. I think Mr. Reed and Mr. Donnelly have covered the case
for Bacon.
2. I think Dr. Rolfe, by his ignorance of the rules of evidence,
and Dr. Furnivall, by his unfortunately hectic style and fan-
tastical devotion to what he calls his "verse tales," and the
snobbishness with which he speaks of " half -educated Ameri-
cans" and "ignorant American juries," are unfortunate counsel
for Shakespeare (by which I mean to say that poor Shakespeare
is unfortunate in his counsel), as likely to prejudice, more than
they convince, a jury.
3. Nevertheless, I decide in favor of Shakespeare.
Specifying why, I note
(a) That the Tobie Matthew postscript was proved by Mr. A.
Waites and by Mr. A. A. Adee not to refer to Bacon at all.
(See " Shakespearean a," vol. viii.)
(b) That the episode of the playing of "Richard II." has
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494 THE ARENA.
nothing to do with the authorship of the Shakespeare plays,
because of the reasons collected so carefully by Mr. Waites in the
" Introduction to the Bankside edition in Richard II," but prin-
cipally because if Bacon, when he spoke of giving in evidence
" mine own tales," referred to the Shakespeare plays, then the
whole secret was known, and he had nothing to conceal or write
"a cipher" about; and because if it was known, Queen Eliza-
beth knew it ; and that she did not know it, is amply proved by
the fact that she did not cut off Bacon's head instanter.
(c) Mr. Reed and Mr. Donnelly, in following Mr. Appleton
Morgan's Shakespearean myth, forget that that work was not a
Baconian authority, but an attempt to find a compromise between
the Bacon theory and the Shakespeare theory, and that, in Mr.
Morgan's own estimation, it was a failure, because its arguments
failed to discover a compromise ; and that its author himself fell
back upon the orthodox theory of the Shakespeare authorship as
the only tenable one in the premises.
(d) Mr. Donnelly's proposition about the copy of the first
folio printed in 1622 is false, because that date (1622) was
investigated by Mr. Morgan. It occurs on the copy of the first
folio in the Lenox library under a powerful microscope, and
is found to be spurious — being made with a pen and by cutting
off a trifle of the original margin. (See Shakespeare " In Fact
and In Criticism.") L. L. Lawrence.
And, generally, on ail the facts and arguments as elicited in
this dissension trial, Mr. L. L. Lawrence renders a verdict in favor
of defendant.
IV. WM. E. SHELDON.
I have read the papers presented in The Arena, taken many
notes, compared the statements with my early investigations on
the question, and think the weight of argument is overwhelm-
ingly in favor of Shakespeare's having written the dramas.
William E. Sheldon.
Verdict for the defendant.
V. GEORGE MAKEPEACE TOWLE.
According to my judgment I can only say that an impregnable
case has not been made out in favor of the plaintiff. The
strongest argument adduced on either side, in my belief, is that
for the defendant, contained in the quotation from Richard
Grant White, made by Dr. Rolfe at the end of his article.
George Makepeace Towle.
George Makepeace Towle renders a verdict in favor of the
defendant.
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THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CASE. 495
VI. MARY A. LIVERMORB.
I am not competent to serve as an unprejudiced juror on the
Bacon-Shakespeare controversy; for I have been interested in
the discussion from its beginning, am familiar with the published
literature of both sides of the question, and own much of it.
Moreover, I reached a decision on the subject some years ago,
when investigations of my own, pursued at Stratford-on-Avon,
put me in possession of facts that removed all doubts from my
mind concerning the Shakespearean authorship of the Shake-
speare plays ; and my opinion remains unchanged.
But I am asked to render my decision on the evidence
adduced from the discussion of the Bacon- Shakespeare question,
which has appeared in the pages of The Arena the last few
months. The Irishman who listened to the arguments, pro and
con, of the attorneys contending in the court room, exclaimed,
" Faith, and both of 'em have got the case ! " And a person
entirely ignorant of this controversy, who knew nothing of the
facts of the case, save what may be learned from the briefs for
the plaintiff and defendant which have appeared in The Arena,
might utter a similar verdict ; for the arguments for the defend-
ant are both ingenious and plausible, till they are thoroughly
examined.
But the briefs for the plaintiff, with a skill born of patient and
extensive scholarship, prove them utterly untenable. Not con-
tent with refutation, they demonstrate the impossibility of the
Shakespearean authorship by a mass of undeniable facts, which
are now universally accepted. Some other person than William
Shakespeare wrote the Shakespeare plays.
Mary A. Livermore.
Mary A. Livermore's verdict, from the evidence in the
controversy: William Shakespeare did not write the Shake-
speare plays.
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THE MAN WHO FEARED THE DARK.
BY HERBERT BATES.
•• And their eyes shall see the dread of the night,
And the shapes that roam and run,
And the wolves of the dark that shall rend the earth
When their king has killed the sun. 11
She sailed slowly, — the broad-bowed fishing boat, — and all
the high-backed waves, that divided at her stern, passed her
scornfully as they hurried on shoreward. The gray, wet fog-
wind weighed heavily behind her reefed sails, and drove her bow
on bravely, and now and then her stubby bowsprit soared dizzily
skyward as she dropped into the moving hollow between the
gray swells.
Yet, in spite of all the impetus of the wind, that grew to a
gale, in spite of the great springing lift of the swell beneath her
keel, to the man who sat in the stern, meeting her swift yaw-
ings with steady tiller, she seemed to stand almost still, to gain
nothing towards the darkness, that he knew would by and by
emerge from the fog — the darkness that would be land.
He had sailed since early morning, without a sight of anything
except the gray, flying fog above, through which at times a stray,
storm-blown sea gull came clamorously whirling, and on all
sides the gray crests of the tossing water, mingled with spaces of
pale green, and covered with long streamers of floating foam
pointing leeward. Everywhere waves, everywhere motion,
everywhere the gray, chilling discontent of the autumnal sea.
The only sound was the creak of the mast and rigging, and
the groan and strain of the timbers, as the boat climbed or fell.
The man sat crouched in his oilskins, watching the swerving
circle of sea about him, and the wavering card of the little
compass that lay before him on the weather-beaten thwart.
Everything was wet. On the deck the water stood in great
oily drops ; it rushed and choked and gurgled through the rock
ballast below ; it dripped dismally from the black cordage, and
from the great brim of the hat that shadowed his face.
He was not of the type of the ordinary New England fisher-
man. His face had a squareness, a strength of forehead, a wide-
ness of mouth, a stolidity of expression, that one does not find
486
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THE MAN WHO FEARED THE DARK. 497
among these. At the first glance one would know him for a
Scandinavian, and the first impression would be right ; for Nels
Thordson was a Norwegian, with all the manlike strength, with
all the childlike simplicity, of the Northland character. '
He was alone. Yet before him, tossed over the bleached
centre-board, which lay, drawn up, across its box, were a coat and
a hat like his ; like his, and yet at a glance one saw that they
would not fit his massive Scandinavian frame. To whom, then,
did they belong ? Why was this man steering at mid-day, with
unladen boat, back to the harbor he had left but the morning
of the day before ?
He, in fact, had been wondering, questioning himself about
himself; and as he thought, he remembered. Yes, it was the
morning before that they had drifted, in gray gathering of fog, past
the low lighthouse, behind which the fir trees were black, out
into the bay.
There were two of them then, and the other was young Patrick
O'Hallighan, the Irish favorite of the village, who lay idly stretched
on the long cross-thwart, and whistled softly as the tide swirled
them circle- wise out to where the rounded sea swell lifted ; and
they had both turned to look back at the bright dresses on the
black pier so far astern, and O'Hallighan had waved his hand.
O'Hallighan and he had always been mates ever since he had
first come to that dark, down-east fishing-town, from the great hills
and breathless fiords of his own Norway. He should never have
left them, — he and his violin, — to try life in this new country
of wearying common sense. He knew nothing of poetry, noth-
ing of romance; yet without knowing them, he felt, in the bright,
dusty, noisy, busy streets of the American cities, that he missed
them.
He had tried to live the city life. He could not live it. The
smoke and noise and the busy people wearied and bewildered
him. He tired of the plump, fuzzy trees, of the ugly houses, and
of the tiny, commonplace hills. He left it all and turned to the
sea.
But it was not his sea ; its shores were sandy, pale, melting to
a dim, indefinite horizon ; the waters were shallow, the fish tiny
and timid. It was not his sea ; yet since it was akin to his, he lived
for a year beside it, and earned his bread, and ate it grimly, and
made no friends.
Then, one night, as he lay in the moonlight among his bleached
lobster pots, the old man who lived on the next beach sat and
talked with him ; and to him, because he liked his face, he told
everything: told of his hills and the fiords and the great gray
sea of the North — the sea of fogs and clouds and storms. The
pl<J man listened and understood, for in his boyhood he had
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498 THE ARENA.
sailed to that land ; and he told Nels Thordson of another land
that, though not like his own, was more like it than where he
now was — a land that lay to the northeast, hundreds of miles,
where the hills of Maine meet the sea.
So here he had come — to the wildest part of the wild Maine
coast — to build his tiny cabin in the little fishing- village of St.
Gregory's, to buy with his little savings a strong-bowed " pinky,"
and to settle down to the same old unambitious life that he had
lived in Norway. This was the end of all his dreams — his
dreams that had led him from the quiet of his home to this new,
restless land.
This was not the life that he led there. The land was a little,
a very little, like his own, with its sternness, though without its
majesty ; but the people did not belong to it nor to him. Yet he
had not the heart to give up all and return to his native town
empty handed, after the grand promise of his setting out. So he
stayed and made the best of it.
O'Haliighan and he had been mates from the first. Different
as they were, they had known, as soon as they met, one foggy,
drizzling day, in the smoke of the crowded store, that they were
to be much with each other. Yet they were very different.
O'Haliighan was short, dark, quick of speech, handsome, cheerful,
fascinating, and all were fond of him, especially the women.
Thordson was large, slow, and sullen ; he had few friends; most
people feared him ; all distrusted him, for he was a foreigner, and
discontented — and these are two things that will keep friends
from any man.
He lived in a house a little back from the village — a house
built in the fashion of his own country, with massive timbers,
with great gables, with strange, grotesque scroll-work, patiently
wrought in the dull waiting of the days when no boat dared sail.
All around stood the dark fir trees, with black, strange hollows,
like the mouths of caverns, opening into the mysteries of the
woods behind.
Here, every night till midnight, he would sit and play his vio-
lin, drawing out of it the wonderful, passionate, piercing music
that his master, blind old Erik Thorgeirson, had taught him in
the little cabin by the black pool, beneath the terrible cliff of the
Sudfels. He used to steal down there daily, for the love of the
music ; and the old man had taught him, and, when he was about
to die, had given him his violin — the strange old one, stolen in
some early war from no one knew where; filled, some whispered,
with the power of uncanny spirits. Gradually the music had
become the one great joy of his life, the one thing to look for-
ward to at the end of the day of toil and of disappointment.
Only, as in the old days it had made him glad, now it made him
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THE MAN WHO FEARED THE DARK. 499
sad; for it spoke so lovingly, so tenderly, of all the things gone
and impossible ; it uttered so piercingly all the vague yet terrible
longing that he would not utter, that it became a voice at once
saddening and solacing, which whispered comfort to him when
he bent his cheek tenderly over its tense strings — comfort, such
comfort as there could be for him, alone, friendless, looking
always eastward to his own land, which lay shut in the gray
seclusion of the impenetrable sea spaces.
He had had one friend, perhaps, in O'Haliighan, who had
always stood by him, even when all spoke ill of him. Thordson
knew it, and hated them ; and they, feeling this, distrusted him
the more. " He is sullen and revengeful," they told O'Haliighan.
" Leave him alone or you will repent it. Some day he will do
you a mischief." But O'Haliighan had only laughed and said :
" Very well ; when he has done it, punish him as you like.
Only you must wait, my dear friends, till the day he has done it,
and that will be never at all."
"He had no prudence," they answered; and even his wise
mother, whom all feared for an old witch, shook her head sol-
emnly and bade him beware. All agreed that he was a fool not
to give heed to her words ; for she was the wisest woman of the
village, with terrible eyes, that frightened every one ; and it was
said that she could curse with seven different curses. So while
no one liked her, no one molested her ; for who would anger a
witch so well defended? It was little wonder that they thought
her a witch, and Thordson, with all his Norwegian superstition,
shuddered as he thought of her; for she was tall and wide faced,
with white, straight hair that fell in wisps over her wrinkled fore-
head, and her eyes were strange and deep set, with fire in them,
like an angry cat's ; and it was whispered that she talked with
the Devil nightly.
Nels Thordson sat in the stern of the tossing boat and thought,
and his remembered life seemed to go swinging on past him to
the rhythm of the reeling deck. O'Haliighan and he had always
been friends. Never had a quarrel come between them ; but of
late a something had arisen, ominous, portending the severing of
friendship ; for never, since the days of the Norse Siguard, have
two men loved one woman, and both lived to find life good.
It was only a year ago that Lena Depreau had come to the
village, with her father, the boat-builder, and her old mother, who
sat bowed all day over the humming spinning wheel. She was
not a beautiful girl, yet she was gifted with strange, irresistible,
physical attraction. There are gypsies by disposition, as there
are gypsies by blood — men and women with warm, strong
natures, with dark faces, with quick nerves, with magnificent,
magnetic, animal vivacity. Of these Lena was one ; a woman of
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500 THE ARENA.
nature, ardent, impulsive, not beautiful, yet, to every man that
saw her, wonderfully and dangerously fascinating.
When he had first seen her, all had changed. Till then his
mind had always dwelt, not with love, but with a certain faint
regret, on the picture of round-cheeked, pale-haired Helga Arn-
grim, who lived in the white cottage that was reflected in the
black waters above the stone bridge of his native village. But
the moment he saw Lena, Helga was forgotten ; yet he felt, with
that spiritual sense that we call soul, that this new love was less
noble — degrading where that was elevating.
Degrading or elevating, it had brought him only sorrow. He
had thought at first that she loved him. Perhaps she had thought
so, too, till O'Hallighan had discovered that he loved her. Then
all was changed, and at night the violin keened strangely from
the shadow of the fir trees', and the passersby went quickly,
believing that they were right who said that the " Swede," as
they called him, had sold his soul to the Devil, that he might learn
to play that marvellous, heart-piercing music.
He had not been angry with O'Hallighan, yet he felt less kindly
toward him; and O'Hallighan, like most men who have given
cause of complaint, was very ready to take offence. Yet the
two had sailed together, though people had warned O'Hallighan
not to go ; for some, they said, who set out on such trips never
returned.
Many had come down to the pier when they set sail, Lena
among them ; and since they were now betrothed, she had kissed
O'Hallighan good by. Even now Thordson could see her bend
to give that kiss, just as she had once, in the quiet cove by the
weirs, bent her face to his. And as he thought of it, something
blurred his eyes, so that he could hardly see the white poles of
the whirling compass card. They had said good by, and Thord-
son had sat silent at the helm while all shook hands with O'Hal-
lighan and hoped that he might come safely back.
He would never come back. All day they had sailed slowly
eastward, all the evening and all night, till the moon that had
risen at sunset was full overhead. Then Thordson had lain down
to sleep. When he awoke he was alone. Where the other had
gone, none knew, save the sea and the great, moon-softened
darkness.
So Nels Thordson was sailing home alone. Perhaps a wiser
man would not have gone back to that expectant, unfriendly
village ; but he, with his stern Norse nature, was honest first,
wise afterward. The first thing to do was to tell O'Hallighan's
friends the truth. After that — he would see. So he sat and
held the straining tiller, and the boat labored on, northwest, up
the fog-bound waters of St, Gregory's Bay.
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THE MAN WHO FEARED THE DARK. 501
II.
Old 'Squire Shaksby sat up suddenly in his armchair, dropped
the dimly printed weekly paper over which his bald head
had been nodding, set his feet firmly on the floor before him,
and fitted his glasses tightly upon his long, aquiline nose. Never
before, in the drowsy streets of his native town, had he heard such
a clamor as now rose from without — shouts and cries and screams,
coming each moment nearer and nearer.
He had only time to totter to his feet when the door swung
open, and three men stumbled in, — two old fishermen, quiet men
both, and deacons in the village church, yet now beside themselves
with angry excitement, — holding firmly between them the Norse-
man, Nels Thordson, who stared about stolidly, letting them push
him as they would. Behind them the crowd came pouring, filling
all the room, except the little semi-circle where the prisoner stood,
and pressing in ominous silhouette against the dusty square panes
of the window.
" Captain Bigsford, my dear Captain Bigsford, whatever is the
matter?" stammered the 'squire, nervously fumbling for his
handkerchief, and becoming more bewildered every minute. " Is
there a riot in the town, or murder ? What has he done ? What
do all these people want ? Why don't you answer one at a time ?
Are you all mad?"
" It's not we that's mad, 'squire," said the elder of the two
captains, gravely, with the dignity of a man whom extraordinary
circumstances make important. "It's not we that have done
any harm, but this Swede fellow here, though I'm not saying that
some has not been pretty nigh doin' violence to him. Lord, but
they are angry ! Listen, 'squire ! Hear that ! "
There rose from the street without, the peculiar, low-pitched
growl of many angry men.
" They was in favor of hanging him," went on the speaker ;
" but I says, * Bring him before the 'squire,' says 1, 4 and have him
hanged according to law.' And at last they agreed. So we've
brought him."
" But what has he done ? " asked the 'squire.
"Murder," said the two at once, with the stern delight of
uttering in earnest a strong, grim word ; and the crowd behind
repeated the answer in an ominous chorus. " He has killed
Patrick O'Hallighan, and, God willing, he shall hang for it."
A great shout of approval arose from the waiting crowd, like
the roar of wild beasts that have scented blood ; and against the
reddening squares of the windows were seen the tossing* of arms
and the surging of hatless heads ; and in the doorway, tier above
tier, stared the ugly, hard faces of men who had resolved to kill.
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502 THE ARENA.
The 'squire turned to Thordson. He stood calm, seemingly
indifferent, straightening with his strong fingers a broken link of
his massive watch chain, an heirloom that the mother had given
him in Norway on his twentieth birthday, ten years ago, when he
saw her last. His fingers never trembled. He stood stolidly
waiting for the end that he every minute expected, inwardly
resolved, however, that before worst came to worst, more than
one of those about him should go to the ground.
'Squire Shaksby looked him full in the face; for, confused as he
was, he was a just man. Yet the calmness of this man angered
him, for he knew nothing of the reserved Norse nature, and he
could not see how an innocent man could remain silent when
such things were said against him.
" Thordson," he said, " tell me, are you guilty as they say ? Is
what they say true?" And the Norseman looked up and saw
the honesty in the eyes that met his, and answered slowly : —
"No, they tell not the truth. It is not I that haf kill
O'Hallighan."
" He lies ! " roared the great blacksmith, who stood, broad
chested, in the door. " They sailed together, and but one comes
back. Where is the other ? "
" Where is the other ? " " Adhere is O'Hallighan ? " « What
have you done with him ? " cried the crowd, pushing nearer.
"Answer them, Thordson," said the 'squire; and the Nor-
wegian again raised his head and looked him in the face, and
answered him man to man.
" Wey sailed togather," he said ; " they say right. Wey sailed
the day-long, the whole day. At the midnight, O'Hallighan, hey
say, i Yo go toe sleep, I watch.' In the morning I wake. It was
when the sky bane getting light. I loke for him, and I find him
not. In the night hey bane gone. I doe not know where hey
bane gone. Yo, 'squire, yo know as well as I. But when they
say I kill him, they say what bane not true. Hey was my friend.
Ef I code haf brote him back, Gode knows I wode haf brote
him ! For hey bane my friend, and I haf not kill him ; and they
that say I haf, they bane liars."
" He lies himself ! " roared the blacksmith, smiting a thun-
derous blow on the oaken door.
" Hang him ! " cried tall Bill Sagsford, with his head above the
crowd. " Do your duty, 'squire, or we'll do it for you ! "
" We're no cowards, if you be!" shouted a third; and the
crowd pressed close and began to sway with that angry strength
which gathers to a wave of stern accomplishment.
The Norwegian stood silent, huge, sullen, calmly regardless,
working, with his great fingers, on the broken link of the heavy
gold chain.
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THE MAN WHO FEARED THE DARK. 503
Closer and closer they pressed. Then suddenly a girl's voice
cried out from the door ; and looking, they saw Lena Depreau
pressing forward. She made her way well to the front, then
turned, and, fearless as she was, spoke her will bravely.
" Listen to me," she said, " all of you ! Do you call yourselves
a law-abiding people, to treat a man in this way, ani he
a stranger ? Are you afraid to give him a fair trial ? Can't you
wait to see whether he is guilty or not ? If he has done it, he
will not be less guilty in a week from to-day, or in a year! Wait,
and if he is guilty, I'll be the first to ask to have him punished.
But you're too fast. And you, 'squire," she added, turning sud-
denly, "aren't you ashamed of yourself — you who should enforce
the law, to do nothing but stand there and let things take their
way ! Are you a coward ? Don't you know your duty ? "
"And aren't you ashamed of yourself, Lena Depreau," cried
out the blacksmith from the door, " to speak for the man as has
killed your betrothed, and, now that ye've lost one of your lovers,
to be harking back to the man that killed him. You've brought
death to one man, and you'll not be saving the other for your
courting now ! And you to leave the O'Hallighan for the man
that murdered him ! "
" It's not him that we'll spare for your sake ! " shouted a
woman^from the back of the room. " May God spoil the beauty
of your face before you spoil more men ! "
" Drag her out ! shame on her ! " cried another ; and the crowd
howled and hissed angrily.
The Norwegian had dropped the chain. His eyes were watch-
ing her.
" Lena," he said.
She turned.
" Doe you believe it ? Doe you believe I killed him ? "
She looked at him, doubtingly, hesitatingly.
"I want to get you fair play," she said, in a low voice;
"whether you've done it or not, I don't know.. But if you have,
and I knew it, I'd kill you myself."
The Norwegian's eyes fell ; he turned the link of the chain,
slowly, as if he did not understand.
She turned to the crowd again : —
" I'm not ashamed of myself," she said, " for I'm as ready as
you to punish this man if he be guilty ; all I ask is, wait till we
know he's guilty."
"Wait and wait! and how long would ye wait — till the day
for God's vingeance is all over and gone ? " cried a shrill voice ;
and through the crowd, that shrunk back before her, came push-
ing the tall, gaunt, terrible form of the grim O'Hallighan, the
mother of the drowned man.
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504 THE AEENA.
" Is ut no hearts that ye have at all," she cried, " that a man's
own mither must come for the revingin' of her son ? And is ut
no woman's heart that ye have, ye Lena Depreau, that ye stand
there a-prayin' for the life o' the man that yer own hands
should murther? Phwut's come to the women, and phwut's come
to the men, when a blinkin' loon of a judge sits noddin', and
niver a blow of justice done !
" Ah, ye cowards ! if Oi had the strength of a man, ut's not on
the ground his feet should be, an' ut's the gulls that should have
strange meat before the morrow morn ! "
She looked round the circle, and waved her staff threateningly,
then stopped with it pointed full at the broad breast of the Nor-
wegian, her face bent forward toward his. Through the western
window the blaze of the red sunset poured fiercely, and in it her
figure loomed sombre and terrible, her eyes glowing like tiny spots
of concentrated fire.
" O ye cowards, all of ye, that will not listen tome!" she said.
" Ut's not on ye, thank God, that Oi must dipind for vingeance.
To think of ut, and he so young, and so han'some, and all ended,
and all because of ye, ye beggarly Swede, with the wide Swede
face of ye, and yer stupid eyes, and the divil in yer skreeking
fiddle strings to help ye ! But ye'll moind this : that the divil of
the O'Hallighan is wor're nor yours, and ut's ye shall know it;
for Oi shall set the black cufse of the O'Hallighan upon ye, that
niver a man has met and lived — the curse of the dread, and the
curse of the dark, and the curse of the trimblin'. And Oi give
ye the eyes that see the shapes of evil, but niver the shapes of
good ; and Oi give ye the heart that quakes, and the knees that
trimble ; and Ox bid them all follow ye and fright ye — all the
spirits of the dark, the bogies and the banshees. May ye see
thim whiniver ye see the dark, wheriver ye be, alone or with
many, wakin' or slapin' ! May they chase ye — the great black
wolves, the bogies that kills — and catch ye at last, and tear ye
limb from limb, and drink the red blood from yer sowi's heart !
Ah, ye may go where ye will, for this is the Black Curse of the
O'Hallighan, that niver a man shall outlive."
She let the end of the stick fall. There was a great silence.
Nels Thordson stared at her stupidly, his eyes wide open with
fear.
The old woman drew off, chuckling. " Ut's a good revinge,
that," she said.
" But if he be innocent?" said Lena, catching at her arm.
" And what difference does that make, to be sure," the old
woman laughed. " There's no if 8 in my curse. No ; be he
innocent or guilty, the word is said, and God Almighty himself
cannot stop the Black Curse of the O'Hallighan. And now," she
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THE MAN WHO FEARED THE DAEK. 505
said, turning to the crowd, " I lave him to ye. Let us see if
ye be too great cowards to help a man's mother to avinge him.
But let me go to mourn, for me heart is sad."
She passed out through the crowded doorway, and the crowd
closed again after her.
It was almost dark now, and the great impersonality of the
darkness gave courage. The 'squire stood up, his hand resting
tremblingly on his little desk.
" Men," he said, " for God's sake, do not be rash. Let us wait ;
let us respect the law ; go quietly now. I will appoint to guard
the prisoner, besides the two that hold him now, Sanford the
blacksmith, and Peters and John Buckley."
" Ye'll not appoint me," cried the blacksmith, " save it be to
guard him to the gallows ! Come on, boys, the cowards that ye
are ; think of the young O'Hallighan that's dead, and his old
mother, and let's at him ! "
" In the name of the state " — began the judge, trem-
blingly; but before he could say more, the storm was loose.
Like a black breaker the crowd crushed through the door, a
tumult of murderous hands, and all the room was a strange, mad
battle-ground where one saw nothing but confused, innumerable,
struggling figures.
At the moment that the rush came, Thordson's look of wonder
had vanished. Here was something that he understood, and his
breath came strong, and his muscles tightened. For a moment
all was confusion ; then he saw the huge form of the blacksmith
come leaping at him in the dark, and he struck at it mightily,
and it fell heavily and was still. Then another came, and
another, and they too fell, and his Norse blood warmed with the
fight. His hand fell upon something on the table beside him ; it
was the 'squire's great walking stick, a weapon massive and terri-
ble, bound with large bands of metal. Round his head it whirled
hissing, and through the crowded room rang the inarticulate wild
battle-cry of his nation, that he had never uttered, that he had
never heard ; that now, in this moment of magnificent peril,
sprang of itself to his lips, the heritage of generations of war-
rior ancestors.
The fight changed. It was no longer a charge, but a flight, a
headlong rush, to escape in any way that gigantic figure that was
everywhere, whose blows crushed down like indignant thunder-
bolts upon shattering skulls.
How it happened, none knew. Each man was bold as a lion ;
but when they entered the house with lights, five men lay on the
floor; three dead, the others dying — and the Norwegian was
gone.
How he escaped, no one knew. He must have gone to his
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506 THE AKENA.
house, for his violin was gone, and his boat was nowhere to be
found. There were no steam vessels at St. Gregory's Bay; and
with the great wind that blew that night, with the terrible gale
that followed, no man could have caught him if any had dared
venture.
When the storm was over, they searched a little among neigh-
boring towns, but with no real hope of finding him. Even the
Norwegian, they said, could not have sailed a boat safely through
such a gale. Besides, they whispered, if he had escaped, would
not the curse follow him wherever he went ? So he was soon
forgotten, save as a terror for unruly children, even by those who
had most cause to hate him. And Lena Depreau had new lovers.
in.
The thunder of the sea beating upon desolate promontories,
loud resounding, roared on all sides, hoarse and threatening. In
the little hill-protected harbor, however, one tiny schooner heeled
restlessly at her moorings, swaying with the veering gusts of the
great November gale that heaped horizon high the waves of the
sea without.
In her cabin all was bright ; for to-night they had visitors from
the land — from the little Nova Scotian town beneath whose
hills they had found shelter; and after a few weeks on the
Banks, it was pleasant to see new faces, and to hear new stories.
So they sat close about the cabin table ; and the brandy and the
whiskey and the rum were set out before them ; and gradually
their broad faces reddened, and the gray coils of smoke from
their pipes rose denser.
" Captain," said the youngest of them all, the mate of the
schooner, leaning forward upon his elbow, and addressing the
guest of the evening, the deep-sea captain who had been cast
ashore, to rest at last in his little native village ; " captain, what
light was that that we saw to the sou'east as we stood in past
Hornsby's Head ? It wasn't there last time we were in here."
The old captain took a long pull at his pipe, and a long drink
from his steaming glass, and then spoke with the dignity of one
who has a long story to tell : —
"That's no lighthouse, my boy; it's just a house, upon the
fourth cliff from the Gut, back against the woods. Lord knows
what ails the man that lives in it. He has been here over a year
now. At first we noticed that he used to keep a light late ; then
he got to keep it all night ; and at last he began to do as he does
now, and keep his whole house a b aze of light. And he sits
there, all night long, with his fiddle shrieking devil-music, — all
of itself, some say, with never a hand to it. That I don't believe;
but people are not over-anxious to pass that way at night, and
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THE MAN WHO FEARED THE DARK. 507
most say that the place is haunted. He's an outlandish-looking
fellow — a Swede, I think — a regular giant, with a stupid, sullen
sort of face. We don't see very much of him. The chances
are that the man's mad. But God save me from being in his
place, if it is as some say, and that he dare not be in the dark for
the things that he sees there. The Lord knows what devils he
has for company. Listen ! you can hear him now ! "
A sailor, entering, had for a moment swung the door ajar, and
a swoop of the gale brought in, faintly from far away, a wild
cadence of violin music, shrill and savage as the shriek of the
storm.
a Yes," he went on, " they say that whenever he sees the dark,
he sees things in it — things with eyes; and that is why he
keeps the lights burning all night long."
" God help him to-night, and keep his lights burning," said the
captain of the schooner, taking a great swallow of tawny brandy.
But the mate bent and whispered to his neighbors, and both
nodded and looked at each other; for they were from St.
Gregory's, and they knew who it was that sat there alone,
trembling with the flickering of his lights, and shuddering at
every shriek of the increasing gale.
IV.
Amid the thunder of the sea upon desolate promontories ; the
voice of the storm, darkly terrible, full of multitudinous, incom-
prehensible murmurings ; the moan of the wind, that* rose and fell,
that shrieked and threatened, over the black, lashing sea, starred
with innumerable flecks of phosphorescent indignation, that
swept up the long slope of the hills, bending and snapping the
bearded stems of the complaining fir trees.
Nels Thordson sat alone.
In every corner of the room there blazed a light, in every
possible vantage-ground of the darkness. Nowhere was there
even a suspicion of shadow.
He sat by the table, his head bowed upon his hand, his eyes
staring at the white planed boards before him. About him all
was bright ; yet through it all, he felt the great presence of the
dark without. He knew that on all sides of him it gathered and
thickened, no longer passive, but increasingly, immeasurably
vociferous.
As he thought, he remembered. It was over a year ago that
he had come there, and every day things had grown worse.
Each night some new terror had been added to the darkness ;
each night it had seemed to reach nearer and nearer to him with
a terrible insistence. He had done nothing! He had injured
no one ! Why did God let the old woman's curse follow him ?
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508 THE AKENA.
Yet it had followed, and gradually he had been forced to shut
the dark out entirely, to avoid the sight of the terrible, madden-
ing shapes that came thronging in — worst of all, the great black
wolves, with fiery eyes, that came from all sides, hungry, multi-
tudinously thronging, with glittering phosphorescence of bared
teeth. It was months since he had seen the dark. Yet he knew
that it waited without the drawn curtains. If it should come —
if it should enter —
He could not play his violin to-night. It seemed as if some
hostile, persecuting spirit drove his hand over the strings, for the
voice was the voice of the dark. He could not tell what malign
spirit might lurk in the dark hollows behind the uncanny curves.
He dared not look, for fear he might see its eyes, and go mad.
He could not play to-night.
Then he thought of Lena. She had not loved him ; but since
he loved her, he thought of her. He could picture her face
but in one way, and that was as it looked when she bent to kiss
O'Hallighan. That picture came again and again, and would not
go away, till he shook his head sternly to shake it away, as one
shakes off a burr.
He thought of Helga. Her he had forgotten, except as a pale
dream. She was light of face, with light blue eyes. If he had
loved her, she might have helped him against the dark ! And he
so needed help ! He so needed help to-night !
The thunder of the sea upon desolate promontories, booming,
organ-like in its anger ; and above it the shrilling of the innu-
merable violins of the wind, the mingled orchestra of the storm !
Against the window rattled the icy, sleety snowflakes. Was it
wind that moaned? Was it not rather the great night-spirit,
Glamr, the rider of roofs, the crusher-in of roof trees ? How the
timbers bent and strained beneath his mammoth weight ! How
the great panels of the door creaked ! If they should break, if
HE should enter, — the hideous giant, white faced, horrible eyed,
with his bristling red hair, his wide, terrible, tusked mouth, —
bringing the dark behind him !
How they revelled outside ! He remembered all the old tales,
all the terrible Northland legends, full of the dread of the dark,
of the Yotuns, of the black giants, of the grim dwarfs, of the
evil-eyed, lean witches, with hooked fingers, of the great bats,
with fathom- wide wings, with terrible talons. Was it not they
that swooped without, whose barbed, bony wing-points rattled at
the windows and scraped across the roof ?
Oh, the vastness of the dark ! Behind the house the black fir
wood; in front the black sea; above, the enormous whirling
giant dance of the dark, the league-high swirls of blackness,
where roamed the things that no man may see and live.
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THE MAN WHO FEARED THE DARK. 509
And the world itself — that, too, was alone in the dark. God
himself knew not where it was going. Where was it whirling
to? into what Titanic presences might it be rushing? They
would catch it at last — the great, voiceless, hurrying host of
monsters that chased it ; and the Fenris wolf would swallow the
sun, and all would be black !
He knew that these were all heathen stories ; but did not the
wind tell him that they were true ? He had feared them when
he was a boy, till Helga had taught him better. She was very
brave in regard to such things, was Helga. If he had but loved
her she would help him now ! If she were but here ! If the
dark were not between them I
The wind deepened and redoubled. It came in massive gusts
that made the house tremble. It crept through the little chinks
under the door, and through the crevices of the windows — cold,
black streams of air, reaching in like thin arms to catch him,
making the candles wave and flicker. He moved to the middle
of the table, close to the great central lamp. By that was refuge ;
and yet it and he and the whole house were so little, so very
little, compared to the night.
That was not the wind ! He had heard the wind often. He
did not fear that. This that had taken the place of the wind was
another voice — the great thunder voice of the indignant dark,
filled with the shrill voices of the spirits of the dark — and they
called him ; they called him by name. God grant that the bars
would hold, that THEY would not enter !
Yes, he could see them! They crowded all the chinks of
the door! They lay flat and stared under it — the little dwarfs
with the ugly eyes — and they stood on tip-toe and peered around
the edges of the drawn curtains, and pointed their little sharp
fingers at him and grinned wickedly ! And the tall giants bent
over them and stared, and shook at the doors, and tugged at the
chimney ! and all about, on every side, snuffing like dogs on the
trail, ran the lean wolves of the dark, black, with fiery eyes, with
bared, gleaming teeth !
He stared at the light. Surely it grew fainter. Surely the
long arms that stretched in through the cracks could reach it. He
felt them touch him, and prick him, and sting him, like deadly
needles of ice ; and at each touch his heart stopped beating, and
the whole room seemed to reel dizzily to the great waltz music of
the gale.
Again a gust ! Could the windows stand it ? How they rattled
under the blows of the fists of the little dwarfs, whose voices
were like the muttering of a million ! and he knew that the dark
without was alive with tiny, restless balls of fire, the eyes of the
beasts that waited.
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510 THE AKESTA.
"What a blow ! It was the great hammer, Myolnir the mighty,
that struck ! The forest giants, the terrible Yotuns, had brought
it!
The dark was between him and every help. And God would
not save him. Perhaps the giants had killed God !
One pane of the window gone, and half the lights darkened !
They were coming, thronging, pointing, grinning, bringing the
blackness with them, pouring in like the sea into a doomed ship.
Light after light extinguished, and only one left, the great central
lamp before him. He threw his - arms about it, and bent his head
close. With men he could fight, but with these — ! They were
close behind him, mocking and pressing their fingers close to his
face; and the beasts, following their terrible, circling course,
closed always in, nearer and nearer.
Another pane gone ! See, they throng about the lamp ! they
point at it with their fingers ! they blow at it with their black,
cold breath ! It wavers ! it thins into blue ! From far off they
come, for now the prey is theirs. Faster and faster, demons on
demons, a last great charge ! Out of the great sea distance, it
swoops — the gathered terror of the embodied dark! THEY
are coming ! ! ! Like a sea wave they rush through the window,
they burst the door from its hinges, they strip off the shingles of
the roof ! The lamp flame leaps and flickers and is gone !
" Helga ! Helga ! Helga ! Help ! The wolves have killed the
sun ! ! "
The thunder of the sea upon desolate promontories — in the
house the silence of death, and over the house the immense,
unpitying blackness of the all-encircling night.
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THE NEW EDUCATION AND THE PUBLIC
SCHOOLS.
BY B. O. FLOWER.
A contest has recently been fought in Chicago which involved
questions of weighty consideration for all thoughtful Americans,
especially as it was the opening conflict in what will doubtless
ere long become a nation-wide struggle between the friends of
the new education and those who advocate the old system of
intellectual training for our public schools.
For years a persistent but unsuccessful warfare has been waged
against the public school system of America, chiefly by various
religious organizations, whose directing brains have been hostile
to what has frequently been termed " godless schools," and also
by those persons who, holding the views of philosophic anarchy,
did not believe in the government paying for education in any
form. The arguments advanced by the religious bodies and
economic theorists, although unquestionably emanating from hon-
est and sincere minds, have proved exceedingly unpopular with a
vast proportion of our people ; and from these sources, so long
as an open warfare was waged against the public school system,
little was to be feared.
The conflict now, however, is assuming an aspect which vitally
threatens the system and demands the unprejudiced atteution of
all who see in the public schools the strongest bulwark of true
republicanism. To-day the public schools of America are the
meeting-places for the children of the rich and the poor. While
they secure the best talent and employ the most approved and
enlightened methods for developing character and enlarging the
mental horizon of the young, they will continue to be little
democracies in themselves. As long as the public schools are
the best schools, a large majority of the children of rich and poor
will attend them, and the beneficent influence exerted in the past
will grow greater with each succeeding year. The marked
advance in educational methods of recent years is demonstrating
the practicability of a schooling which at once develops body,
brain, and soul, and gives to life a new and lofty significance not
known by those who came under the old system of training.
If, however, as is evidently the hope of those who are unfavor-
able to popular secular education, a retrograde step is to be taken,
511
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512 THE ARENA.
if the wise policy which has marked the educational march of
recent years is to be changed, the children of the rich will soon
be found in private schools, while the poor will be compelled to
go through the old tread-mill method of intellectual training.
I do not for a moment believe that a backward step would be
possible in any American city if the people understood the nature
of the issue and its real significance ; and, indeed, it is highly
probable that most of the leading spirits who have hastily joined
the reasonless clamor raised against the new education would be
among the strongest defenders of progressive methods, if they
looked beneath the surface or paused to grasp the real import of
the problem. I think it is reasonable to infer that the enemies
of the public schools are raising this cry, in order ultimately to
seriously impair the system ; but I am positive that a large major-
ity who have engaged with them are innocent of any such intent.
Many of the champions of the old system are at once thoughtful
men and women, and loyal to public education ; but I think in
this case they have failed to investigate properly the influence
and trend of the two systems. Then there is a third class among
the opposition who know too little about the subject to discuss it
with even a show of intelligence. They belong to a large body
of unthinking human echoes in every community who take up
easily remembered phrases and popular shibboleths, and bray
them forth in loud, reverberating tones, which always suggest
vacuity.
In order to view this problem in a fair and comprehensive
manner, it will be necessary to state the contention, giving some
of the principal objections urged against the new methods, as
well as institute a comparison between the old and new systems
of education.
,n.
In Chicago a popular cry was raised against what was con-
temptuously termed " fads " by the enemies of the new educa-
tion ; this opprobrious term being used to designate the beneficent
innovation which the wonderful educational progress of the past
thirty years has demonstrated to be of inestimable value in com-
passing the ends of true education — the development of body,
mind, and soul. Music, drawing, color work, modelling, folding
and pasting, and physical culture were among the innovations
assailed by the champions of the old tread-mill system, who
seemed to imagine that they had been introduced merely to
amuse the young instead of forming a part of a grand ideal of
popular culture, which observation and practical experience have
proved to be of the greatest utility in awakening thought, and in
various ways meeting the high requirements of the present
progressive age.
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THE NEW EDUCATION. 513
It has been urged that we should return to the old methods on
the score of economy, while it has also been claimed that the
broader methods were carrying popular education beyond its
proper limits ; that we were only justified in giving the public
school children a fundamental education, popularly termed the
" three II " schooling. " Why should the children of John Smith
or Fred Jones be taught music, drawing, or physical culture?
They are not going to teach these things, but in all probability
will go from school into the factory, store, or on the farm."
This question was put to me in an animated manner by a de-
fender of the old education in a recent discussion, and presents
the pith of one of the arguments which has been effectively used
more than once in influencing persons who have always regarded
education in a superficial way. " Again," my friend continued,
"these new-fangled innovations are breeding discontent in the
minds of the children of the working classes ; they learn some-
thing of music and drawing, and then they are not satisfied with
the lot God ordained them to fill." In regard to awaking dis-
content, I replied, you are unquestionably correct ; but it would
be well for you to consider whether God or society ordained
their lot. A further objection was forcibly advanced in an edi-
torial in the Chicago Post, written in reply to an argument which
I had made in the Inter- Ocean. In bis reply the editor says : —
We have often spoken of this subject, but there can be no harm in .
pointing out to Mr. Flower again the immense, the incalculable, damage
that faddism has wrought to the public school system in this city. It
has, as we can assure Mr. Flower, reduced the organization to that point
where we have really no superintendent of schools. We have a gentle-
man of some ability nominally filling that place, but he is without ade-
quate authority. He has supreme control in almost nothing. He is
hampered on every side by little superintendents or bosses who would
defy his authority if he ventured to assert it.
The editor next criticises the various " bosses," and declares
that not one of these persons acknowledges the authority of the
so-called superintendent. This alleged defect in the public school
organization and discipline is seriously advanced as a reason for
discarding the new education.
Now, I wish to briefly notice each of these objections before
passing to the next division of the discussion.
1. Economy. — We must not forget that popular sympathy for
an essentially bad cause is not infrequently won by employing
a popular shibboleth and assailing the forces of progress with
obnoxious epithets; thus in the recent controversy in Chicago, the
popular and seductive cry "economy" has been urged against
what were contemptuously termed " fads." Wise economy is a
rare and precious virtue in public affairs ; but a penny- wise and
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514 THE ARENA.
pound-foolish policy, which refuses to grant sufficient money to
employ the best talent and introduce the most approved methods
of culture in our public schools, is recreant to the highest interests
of the individual and the state ; and a society which thus with-
holds from the receptive brain of the child those influences which
develop full-orbed manhood commits a crime against the young
which will eventually, in the nature of the case, require a much
greater outlay for prisons and poor-houses than the amount
demanded for the full employment of the new education, from
the kindergarten through the grammar school. The difference
between real and pseudo economy in public affairs is the
difference between statesmanship and demagogy.
2. That the new education is carry i7ig popular schooling beyond
its proper limits. — This question will be fully answered when
we compare the two systems ; but it is well, just here, to note
that those who advance this view have entirely lost sight of the
real purpose of the new education. To them education offers no
aspect other than commercial. They cannot conceive of music,
drawing, or physical culture being of any real value unless the
children propose to teach them. This narrow vision is one of the
sad but legitimate fruits of the present money- worshipping age,
in which the deepest and richest well-springs of life are often
heedlessly disregarded, and true culture appears to be something
unintelligible to those crazed by the fever for gold. It is also
. well for us to remember, before it is too late, that when the
public schools of America lag behind other schools through failure
to employ the most approved methods for developing character,
as well as cultivating brain, we shall have surrendered to the effete
civilization of the past the breastworks of modern republicanism.
3. It breeds discontent. — Yes, it breeds that intelligent discon-
tent which is the handmaid of progress, the mother of civiliza-
tion, and the hope of humanity's redemption. When my friend
advanced this as an objection, I replied that he had now struck
the tap-root of the opposition. Plutocracy and conservatism fear
the discontent of the toiler as they fear nothing else. Anything
which tends to arouse the industrial millions to an intelligent con-
ception of essential justice, awakens opposition in the citadels of
conventionalism and the strongholds of acquired wealth. The
rich and privileged few continually fall into a fatal error by fail-
ing to discriminate between intelligent and ignorant discontent.
The former is open-eyed ; she discerns wrongs, and understands
how they should be righted ; she relies upon education and agita-
tion ; her weapon is reason ; she is essentially a torch bearer, and
her voice awakens the conscience of those who, were it not for
her cry, would ere long be overtaken by retribution and ruin.
Ignorant discontent is blind; she senses something wrong; she
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THE NEW EDUCATION. 515
cannot reason ; the higher chambers of her soul have not been
opened; the finer music of nature has never penetrated her
brain, but the fires of animal passion blaze, and hate fed by in-
justice smoulders until some little incident occurs, and then a
cataclysm follows. The only thing to-day which can prevent a
bloody revolution in this republic is the intelligent discontent which
from ocean to ocean is calling aloud for justice. Intelligent dis-
content is the servant of right and of peace ; she awakens the
sleeping soul ; she is the hope of freedom and true civilization.
4. Demoralizes the schools. — This objection is so palpably
insincere, when advanced as an argument against the new educa-
tion, that it scarcely calls for refutation. No one will deny that
the public schools, like an army, demand perfect organization and
discipline. Moreover, it is the duty of the proper officials to see
that discipline is rigidly enforced. The superintendent should
be a broad-spirited, large-brained man, in perfect sympathy with
progressive methods. His duties should be clearly defined, as
should those of each teacher. Any dereliction or disobedience
on the part of any of the employees in the schools should be dis-
ciplined as promptly as if the offender belonged to the army.
The objection raised by the Post might be brought against the
teachers of the old line of studies, as it is merely a question of
discipline. Had the objector been sincere, he would have pro-
posed that the public schools be so disciplined that disorganiza-
tion would be impossible, but he would never advance " lack of
discipline or organization " as a reason for a change of system in
education.
That such demoralization exists in Chicaga as the editor of the
Post maintains, while being a strong reflection upon the compe-
tency of the school officers, is no argument whatever against the
genius of the new methods, as will readily be seen when one
remembers that in many great cities the new education operates
like clockwork, and the most satisfactory results are attending its
employment. I can speak from personal knowledge as to the
ease with which music and drawing were taught in the public
schools which I attended several years ago, while I would call the
attention of those who imagine they can charge lack of discipline
as a result of new education, to Professor Felix Adler's school in
New York, which has become a Mecca for educationalists, and in
which the body, brain, and soul are simultaneously developed
with the ease with which we open and close the whole hand. In
this school there are between three hundred and fifty and four
hundred scholars, who, in addition to the ordinary education,
receive a careful industrial training. In a recent report of this
school, I find the following description of the methods here
employed : —
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516 THE ARENA.
The greatest stress is laid upon the organic connection between the
workshop teaching and other branches ol instruction, so that the shop
shall not be a foreign body introduced into the organism of the school,
but a living member of that organism. There is also in the school an
atelier, in which the children learn free-hand drawing and modelling.
The elements of natural science are taught in all classes, and in this
branch the aim is not so much to give a mass of positive information, as
to train the powers of observation and to cultivate a love for nature.
Tho great enthusiasm for science study which pervades the school shows
that this aim has, in a measure, been attained. The attitude toward
knowledge which it seeks to promote is that of assimilation, rather than
that of appropriation. It seeks to develop a noble humanity in the
child, to foster its inner growth, and to cause the whole school life,
government, discipline, as well as instruction, to converge to this end.
Professor Adler's school is noted for its fine discipline no less
than for the unsurpassed success in blending moral, intellectual,
and industrial education in such a manner that children enjoy
school while having sturdy character developed, and being
brought into touch with manual labor in such a way as to dig-
nify it by association, or, in other words, lift it from the degraded
place where false education and artificial civilization have con-
signed it. In this school the ethical, the mental, and the physical
natures are trained; each line of education complements the other
in such a way as to produce full-orbed manhood.
I have cited this case merely to prove how unfounded and
essentially unjust it is to claim that enlarging the scope of edu-
cation necessarily operates unfavorably upon organization or
discipline if the school system is in the hands of competent offi-
cials and teachers.
I now wish to examine the aims and tendencies of the two
methods of educational training ; for the system which is opposed
by superficial politicians is in many respects fundamentally unlike
the old method, and I also wish to point out the valid claims
which the new schooling offers to the thoughtful consideration of
those who are too intelligent to mistake an epithet of contempt
or a shaft of ridicule for an argument.
III.
The old system trained the intellect along certain lines; it
gave an education which was, to a certain degree, indispensable ;
it taught the child how to read and write ; it opened the pages
of history, and pointed out the rich treasure-house of past
ages, with its literature, religion, art, and science, and thus ac-
complished much good. It was a splendid step in advance of
the religious system of schooling which had preceded it, because
it did not place science under the ban, or forbid the intellect
straying into those fields of ancient thought which the church
did not approve. Thus in so far as this education was broader
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THE NEW EDUCATION. 517
and more liberal in its instincts than the religious education which
had preceded it, it was more beneficent in its fruits; but it pos-
sessed elements of restriction which were incompatible with the
proper development of man, and the range of its vision was
comparatively narrow. Its impulses were conservative, and it
wedded thought to books.
1. Its tendency was often repressive, and it too frequently
destroyed that vigorous independence of thought and originality
of conception which have fathered almost every great discovery
the world has seen. The pupil learned to take his ideas from
books rather than indulge in original reasoning; indeed, frequently
under the old method the child who presumed to question was
asked, in a supercilious tone by the parrot-like teacher, if he
imagined he knew more than the author of the text-book. It
was this repressive tendency of the old system which led to that
criticism, which unfortunately was often too just, that our educa-
tional institutions " were polishing pebbles and dimming dia-
monds." Moreover, the child failed to associate the written
thought with the objective realities, and thus passed through life
with his school- acquired education in one mental compartment,
and his practical knowledge in another.
The spirit of the old method, while fostering scholasticism and
a reverence for the authority of the past, was not favorable to the
development of genius, to original conceptions, or to the inventive
spirit. It has frequently been observed that a large proportion
of our great inventors and most original discoverers have, like
Franklin and Edison, for example, failed to receive a university
education,* while nothing is more noteworthy than the hostility
which has time and again been exhibited by the scholastic world
toward original thinkers who have made discoveries of vast
moment to the race.f
* A scholarly friend, in speaking: to me of a great inventor, remarked that it was
fortunate for the world that this man had never received a university education, or he
would have ** known that no such results could have been attained." Such is the dog-
matism of scholasticism. This friend, in speaking of some magnificent original work
a fellow-laborer had accomplished, remarked that the colleges would have ruined the
strong originality of our mutual friend, and in all probability made a pedant of one
who was now a splendid intellectual free lance ; and the speaker was a gentleman who
had spent many years of a long and honorable life ably tilling chairs in important
educational institutions.
t In an admirable paper by R. Heber Newton on the " Dogmatism of Science,'* the
learned divine shows dv numerous illustrations how hostile .scholasticism has been to
new truth. The following citations are for the most part taken from this paj>er. The
scholars of Italy — no less than the church which, at that time, it is true, possessed
most of the scholars — were intolerant of the demonstrations of Galileo, and it was a
professor of philosophy in Padua who refused to look in the telescope lest he be con-
vinced that he was wrong. Who does not know of the scholastic opposition which met
the discovery of Newton? Harvey had to face the reasonless intolerance of the learned
brothers of his profession, and during his day the College of Physicians of London
ignored his discoverv ; while almost half a century after he announced the great truths,
the Royal Society of Medicine of Paris listened attentively to a long scholastic argument
which attempted to prove the theory of the ** Circulation of the Blood an iinjKjssibility."
Shouts of derisive laughter are said to have greeted Benjamin Franklin's report
before the Royal Society of Great Britain, in which he showed the identity between
I
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One of the gravest defects of the old system lay in its repres-
sive tendencies. It was inhospitable when not fatal to the proper
development of genius. In many respects it resembled the ideals
which the Chinese have cherished for centuries. The young brain
was made to front the past rather than the future. The intel-
lectual flowers culled were gathered from the graves of the ages.
The mind was drilled upon hard and fast lines ; while the higher,
finer, and more vital elements in the child nature were permitted
to rest dormant when not positively dwarfed during the "most re-
ceptive period of life.
2. Another defect in the old system was found in its failure to
impress the mind of the young with the dignity of manual labor. —
It schooled the intellect along narrow lines, but the hands were
not trained along with the brain, and it lacked the breadth which
is characteristic of true greatness, and which grows only in an
atmosphere hospitable to wholesome freedom and a manly rec-
ognition of the honorable character of all useful labor. The child
in the kindergarten or primary school who makes a box has
unconsciously received a mental association which will benefit him
in after years. The gulf between the mental attainment and
manual labor in his little intellectual world has been bridged, and
the child brought into practical relationship to physical work.
It is true that the method at present employed is only a step in
the right direction. The new education aims to dignify manual
labor, and to give the youthful brain, by association with school
life, an appreciation for manual labor which takes away the
vicious popular idea of other days that it is degrading.
3. A still further flaw in the old system was its failure to de-
velop t/ie ethical side of life. It did not make the character of the
multitude of young lives coming under its influence blossom in
the glory and loveliness of true manhood and womanhood. Its
atmosphere was, conventionally speaking, moral ; that is, its text-
books were full of moral platitudes, but it failed to impress ethics
in a systematic or soul-moulding way. It did not take hold of
life and produce broad-souled, conscientious, and justice-loving
men and women, any more than, as we shall presently see, the
religious education which preceded modern methods developed a
virtuous or truly religious life. This serious flaw in our popular
system is to-day working injuriously in many ways; indeed, it
may be said to be one of the great tap-roots of the misery in the
world. Any civilization which is not nourished by a character-
lightning and other electrical phenomena. Galvani complained that he was assailed
by two classes — the scientists and the know-nothings. Both alike ridiculed him.
Napoleon referred the subject of steam navigation to the Academy of Science, and the
idea was pronounced "a ridiculous notion. When George Stevenson first projected
the idea of railroad travelling, the British House of Commons would not seriously
listen to his plan. These instances might be multiplied until they filled a volume of
space indicating the dogmatic and hostile attitude of the old education to creative
and inventive genius, and to the development of original thought.
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building education lacks the vitality of uninterrupted growth and
progressive development, and must sooner or later suffer eclipse.
The old education failed at this vital point. The ethical side
of the youthful nature, from whence comes. the highest pleasures,
and which is the foundation of every noble character, was at best
only incidentally touched. One result of this lack of character
development is apparent in the merciless selfishness of many of
our shrewdest business men, who without compunction commit
deeds which increase the burdens and add to the misery of
millions of their fellow-creatures. A further result may be seen
in the rapid colonization of Canada from our centres of wealth,
due very largely to this fatal lack of developing the moral char-
acter during childhood, when the brain is as plastic as the sculp-
tor's clay. Still another defect of this system, and one which is
much more important than may appear at first sight, is found in
the failure of the purely intellectual method to relieve the barren-
ness of life for the multitude. There were some minds which
revelled in books and the thoughts of others, but to a large
majority the old system was often dull and irksome. It failed to
enrich and broaden the soul, to give that variety and scope for
healthy brain expansion which is essential to self -development.
These evils were real, and the effect has been recognized by
the most intelligent and broad-minded educators of the past
generation.
But while frankly recognizing these shortcomings, we must
not allow ourselves to be misled by the cry which has been raised
in many quarters, and has been of late so vigorously urged, that
the failure of our popular system is found in the fact that no
theological tenets are forced upon the children.
So much has been said by religious enthusiasts and fanatics
about our "godless" schools, and so persistent have been the
efforts to undermine the noble fabric of secular education, that it
is essential to glance for a moment at the moral atmosphere
and the general influence of the theological education of the
thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. This is
especially important, in that those who would destroy the secular
school, instead of seeking to remedy its defect, would have us be-
lieve, by inference and indirect assumption, that religious schools
or educational institutions under the direct supervision and fos-
tering care of the church accomplished what secular education
failed to give — high, broad-souled, justice-loving characters ;
when as a matter of fact no schools have failed more lamentably
in this respect than those which flourished when the church
exerted an all-powerful influence over society. Erasmus has
given us some vivid pen pictures of the superstition exhibited in
his day, and the savage hostility toward classical studies die-
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520 THE ARENA.
played by those who ought to have been broad, thoughtful, and
ever ready to accept the truth.
But it is not so much of superstition or of hostility to either
new ideas or the 'wealth of classic thought, which met with such
pronounced opposition from the leaders of conventional education
and dogmatic religious thought, that I wish to specially notice.
The public school system has been boldly assailed on the ground
that it failed to develop the ethical or spiritual nature. Now, I
believe no truth-loving and sincere student of history will fail to
see that in this respect the popular schooling of to-day succeeds
far more satisfactorily than did the religious education which
preceded the system of secular training.
IV.
Two things must be remembered by the student who examines
the education which flowered when the church was the uncon-
tested mistress of Western Europe. (1) Ecclesiasticism guarded
jealously all educational institutions, regarding them as "instru-
ments for the propagation of the faith," and (2) that in all
schools and universities, theology held the place of honor and dis-
tinction ; the arts, law, and medicine were the handmaids of the-
ology, over which the church kept a jealous eye. To illustrate,
between the years 1200 and 1250, the University of Paris, which
was the mother of the universities of the thirteenth century, was
made the subject of fifty pontifical letters regulating studies and
granting privileges.*
The teaching of civil and canon law was carried on in most
of the universities; but the jealous manner in which the church
regarded the teaching of civil law is well exemplified in the bull
issued (1220) by Pope Honorius III. prohibiting all teaching of
civil law in Paris, and in the bull of Innocent IV. (1254) extend-
■ ing the prohibition throughout all France. During the time of
Alexander III. the bishops wished the exclusive right of confer-
ring license to teach placed in their hands. Numerous similar
illustrations might be cited, indicating how jealously the church
watched over all education. The subordinate position of the law,
medicine, and the arts, in comparison to theology, was well illus-
trated by the fact that a man might become a Master of Arts at
twenty-one, a Doctor of Law or Medicine at twenty-six or
twenty-seven; but the title of Doctorate of Theology was not
conferred until a man reached thirty-five years of age.
Religion occupying such an exalted position, and the church
being the mistress of state, school, and university, we naturally
expect to find here the ripest fruits of a religious education.
Especially have we the right to look for such results among those
* See Compayre's " Origin and Early History oX Universities."
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THE NEW EDUCATION. 521
scholars who made religion their special study. Now, with these
facts in mind, let us notice some side lights of history bearing on
the life and morals of those who came under the influence of this
religious education.
Gabriel Compayre, in discussing the early history of the uni-
versities, observes : a It was not in riots only that the students
took delight. Gallant and amorous adventurers played a cer-
tain part in their existence. ... In 1425 six or seven law students
of the University of Montpelier, in masks, broke into a house in
the deep of night and carried off a young woman. The univer-
sity hindered the prosecution of these ravishers. . . . From the
year 1,218 the ecclesiastical judge of Paris had been complaining
of the scholars, who, said he, * force and break open the doors of
houses, and carry off girls and women.' Jaques de Vitry de-
nounced the debauched morals of Paris several years later. * In
the same houses,' said he, * there are schools on the first story,
and infamous resorts below.' If one consults Coppi, for example,
he may convince himself that the morals of the Italian universi-
ties were just as bad." Our author continues, quoting from the
historian of the University of Angers : " The morals of the stu-
dents were very profligate. They fought every day among them-
selves and with the citizens. Yet all these students were clerics,
and some of them already provided with curacies."
But perhaps it is not in school life that we can most justly
gauge the influence of an educational system. That measure of
power for weal or woe is exhibited most decisively by the cult-
ured after the flush of youth passes and they mingle with
society. Here we should reasonably expect to see the glory of
noble lives and worthy examples, especially among those who
held seats of authority in religion ; for it must not be forgotten
that at this time the church not only kept sleepless vigil over
educational institutions, but the theological training was placed
above all other schooling. And yet a volume could be tilled
with citations of eminent churchmen which reveal the terrible
obliquity, of those in authority during this period of religious
supremacy in the educational world. I have room only for two
or three citations — not nearly the most startling or appalling
which might be given, but sufficient to indicate that the religious
education of those centuries failed most signally in developing a
pure life or noble character.
One of the most illustrious ecclesiastics of his age, Cardinal
Julian Cesarini, in the first half of the fifteenth century, while
endeavoring to persuade Pope Eugenius IV. against dissolving
the council of Basil, expressed his grave fears that the whole
fabric of the Roman Church would be overthrown, unless the
church acted promptly, owing to the popular feeling being so
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522 THE ARENA.
stirred up against the clergy, on account of their general neglect
of duty and their scandalously immoral lives.*
In 1435 Andreas, Bishop of Minorca, addressed to the Cardi-
nal Legate Cesarini an exhortation, in which he said : " Evils,
sins, and scandals have so increased, especially among the clergy,
that, as the prophet says, already accursed lying and theft, and
adultery and simony, and murder and many other crimes have
deluged the earth. . . . The avarice and lust of domination and
the foul and abominable lives of the ecclesiastics are the cause of
all the misfortunes of Christendom."
In 1437 the Dominican, John Nider, declared that the general
reformation of the church was hopeless on account of the wicked-
ness of the prelates and the lack of good will of the clergy.
In 1453 Arneas Sylvius solemnly declared : " It is for this I
dread the Turk. Whether I look upon the deeds of prince or
prelate I find that all have sunk, all are worthless. You are
Christians in name, but you do the work of heathens — execra-
tion, falsehood, slaughter, theft, and adultery, and you add blood
to blood."
In one of his Lenten sermons, in 1497, Savonarola describes
the priests of the people as " destroying the souls of their flocks
with their wicked example. Their worship," he declared, was
" to spend the nights with strumpets and the days in singing in
the choirs."
On the^ieath of Julius II., Granfrancesco Pico della Mirandola
addressed a letter to Pope Leo X. setting forth the condition of
society, which called for radical and immediate reformation.
In this letter he declared that "the worship of God was neg-
lected, the churches were held by pimps and catamites, the nun-
neries were dens of prostitution, justice was a matter of hatred
and favor, piety was lost in superstition, the priesthood was
bought and sold, the revenues of the church ministered only to
the foulest excesses, and that the people were repelled from
religion by the example of their pastors." f
As I have before observed, these citations might be extended
until a volume would be required to contain them. They are
sufficient, however, to indicate the moral atmosphere of the cult-
ured world at a time when ecclesiasticism held supreme control
over education. But this failure of moral development to sub-
due the savage in man, during the domination of theological
thought, was further exemplified by the fearful spirit of intoler-
ance and religious bigotry which burst forth in relentless fury
during the last half of the sixteenth century. Indeed, it is a
fact never to be forgotten that the spirit of intolerance and
* See " Encyclopaedia Britannica," vol. xx., pane 321.
t " The Inquisition of the Middle Ages," By Henry Charles, Lea. Vol. ill., p. 639,
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THE NEW EDUCATION. 523
persecution has cast a portentous shadow across the pathway of
progress whenever dogmatic theology has shaped education. I
have called attention to these facts as they relate to the condition
among the cultured and most favored during the reign of the
education which came as the blossom of the many centuries of
union of church and state, following the reign of Constantine ; not
for the purpose of exciting or awakening any religious prejudice,
for I believe no man lives who abhors the vicious spirit of bigotry,
partisan hate, and religious fanaticism more than I do, and I
have no sympathy with those who attempt to create bitter hos-
tility between religious bodies by appealing to prejudices, and
thus seeking to fan anew the spirit of intolerance and persecution.
But the issue has been forced so persistently upon those who
believe in secular education, and the public school has been so de-
terminedly assailed as a pernicious and godless institution, that I
should be recreant to duty not to point out the fact that when
the religious education, so dear to those who assail secular
schools, had full sway, it utterly failed to accomplish the very
thing for which the public school system had been assailed; while
in addition to this failure, it fanned the flames of intolerance
which dogmatic theology sooner or later awakens.
After we have made full and liberal allowances for the differ-
ences in the periods and the progress made by humanity since
the era of intellectual freedom and popular education dawned, I
believe all impartial students of history will agree^that our
system of secular education may stand proudly erect in the
presence of the much lauded system which preceded it. But if
any one doubts the comparative merits of the two systems, let
him compare the popular intelligence and general progress of
the nations where at the present time religious education is most
absolute with those countries in which public instruction is
divorced from religious training. Compare, if you will, our
republic with Spain, where it is probable that education is more
completely under the control of the church than in any other
land ; or compare any of the South American civilizations, whose
educational systems are under the control of the church, with
our secular system.
In every case it will be found that where dogmatic theology
prevails, and where no hospitality is extended to truth-loving
science and untrammelled thought, progress moves with slow and
halting step, and the fires of intolerance are ever ready to flame
forth. This is an all-important point for us to bear in mind while
we frankly criticise the shortcomings of our present-day secular
education. Each of the old systems failed signally to properly
develop a well-rounded, tolerant, liberal, and just character. The
new method is based upon the broader, deeper, and more pro*
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524 THE ARENA.
f oundly human thought of our time, which holds that it is less
difficult to fascinate a child into the ways of virtue and progress
than to drive him thither ; and it seeks to open all the windows
of the soul which look skyward.
The new education is not, as the superficial imagine, a series of
innovations introduced to amuse and entertain the young. Never
did ignorance err more egregiously than when she applied the
contemptuous epithet u fads " to those radical innovations which
are steps taken by the most enlightened educators in the intro-
duction of a broad and comprehensive system of schooling as
utilitarian as it is philosophical. The apostles of the new educa-
tion, recognizing the defects and failures of the past, employed
the modern scientific methods, and sought the fundamental cause
of these failures. They found that children were above all else
imitative, and that the vivid impressions made in early years
were often the most enduring influences which operated in later
life. They learned that, long before the youthful brain was able
to reason, or in any vital way grasp and intellectually appropriate
lessons or arguments presented by word of mouth or by written
thought, those things in the child's environment which appealed
to the imagination and more sensitive faculties made life-long
impressions. Here was a fact of stupendous importance to the
educator.^ The child's mind was plastic as the sculptor's clay.
It was largely moulded by those early surroundings and in-
fluences which appealed in a real or moulding way to the mind.
The more deeply the subject was considered, the more apparent
it became that the education of the past, notwithstanding its
excellent intentions, had played upon one or two keys in that
wonderfully mysterious and complex instrument, the human
mind, leaving the others to the caprice of environment.
The new education seeks, in a perfectly rational and common-
sense way, to touch all the keys of the human brain which can
yield divine harmony. It would make the Jife of a child a sym-
phony rather than a discord. Now, this splendid result can
never be accomplished through the old didactic and pedantic
methods of intellectual drill, any more than it would be possible
to make a whole field blossom with flowers when only a little
patch of the same had been planted or cultivated. And what is
more, the intellectual training, while having its place, is entirely
inadequate to compass the requirements of a full-orbed educa-
tion. The imagination must be appealed to, and. the child must
be developed through actions and environment, as well as
through conventional mental drill.
I remember some years ago reading a description of the salt
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THE NEW EDUCATION. 525
mines of Austria, in which the author describes persons who had
been born and had grown up in the mines without ever seeing the
splendor of the earth above them. Now, we might describe to
such persons the beauties and fragrance of the flowers and the
music of the birds, but they would receive a very inadequate con-
ception of what we desired to convey, if only words were used.
On the other hand, if we could bring them up to the earth and
lead them into a garden of roses and lilies, where birds were
carolling their songs, the eye, the ear, and sense of smell would
be appealed to simultaneously. They would at once be illumi-
nated with a knowledge which no words could convey.
This is precisely what the new education does. It impresses
the mind on all sides by bringing it into vital relationship with
those things which appeal irresistibly to the nobler and more
essential elements of being. It trains the eye, the ear, and
sense of touch. It develops at once^ body, brain, and soul. It
substitutes tangible art, music, and practical manual labor for an
education made up entirely of phrasings and mental drill. It
unfolds to the child mind the inherent loveliness of the pure,
the elevating, and refining. It subtly carries into the brain the
inspiration of goodness, as the sun beam bears life to the flower.
It is the only rational and entirely common-sense system of
education ever employed.
The results of the kindergarten instruction, of the industrial
schools, and other institutions where intelligent, though as yet
imperfect, attempts have been made to develop a high ideal of
manhood, have demonstrated that the system is not only essen-
tially rational and perfectly practical, but that it changes the
school for the ordinary child, from an irksome prison, into a
temple of delight, where the young brain is fascinated into good-
ness and lured into greatness.
Space forbids my more than briefly noticing some cardinal
points of excellence not present in the old system.
1. The new education stimulates original thought, fosters gen-
ius, and encourages the inventive spirit. — It is suggestive rather
than didactic. It teaches the child to model, to make boxes, to
draw and color, and in various ways awakens thought and sets
the machinery of the brain in motion. Its every impulse favors
the calling out of the best from the young mind. Then, again,
this new method brings the brain into direct relationship with
life and objects of life, and in a very real way awakens the child's
inventive skill. "To make," suggests " to improve," and before
long his mind is lured into many vistas of thoughtful speculation
which in time must yield practical fruit never to be hoped for
from those who were chained to books and taught to expect the
ultimate of wisdom in the expressions of others* brains.
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2. The new education is utilitarian in its impulses. — It teaches
the young to bring the hands as well as the brain into play, and
tends to destroy the aversion for manual labor which the old
system too often created. When a girl is taught how to sew or
prepare a dinner, far more has been done for her than merely
placing knowledge of a practical nature within her grasp; for
her mind has been acquainted with work which others must per-
form, even if she never is required to put her training to actual
use ; and with this knowledge she is brought in sympathy nearer
to the manual laborer. She has learned to work with her hands,
and that work does not seem degrading or servile, for she learned
it in school. The same is true of the boy who is instructed in
some trade ; and ultimately, I believe, industrial education will
complement all other schooling in the best ordered institutions.
3. Nowhere is the advantage of the new education more per-
ceptible than in the realm of true ethical development and the
unfolding or calling forth of all that is finest and best calculated
to yield t?ie purest and highest pleasures. As I have observed,
the most progressive and thoughtful teachers, who are also care-
ful students of social and ethical problems, have observed that
man's life is largely moulded by impressions and thoughts given
at certain periods in life; and at no time has thought such
destiny-fixing power as during the early years of life, when the
brain is plastic and receptive. The child who at school receives
only dull and irksome instruction, and into whose home life the
higher pleasures do not enter, will soon have his brain filled with
low ideals and gross pleasures found on the sensual plane. Let
the mind during this formative period brood upon base objects
and imaginings, and a downward bent is given to life. Low
jests, coarse language, and frequent participation in vicious and
degrading deeds, in order to gratify abnormally developed pas-
sions, result in making a man with low ideals, sensual tastes, and
uncontrollable appetites; a man who is likely to squander the
little he may earn in drink, and who is liable to become a crimi-
nal or a pauper. Now it has been proven that when children,
during the period when the brain is plastic, come under ennobling
influences^ when their minds are filled with thoughts and ideals
seductively presented, yet refining in character, the aspirations,
tastes, and bent of life, in a large proportion of cases, respond
to these upward impulses. Acting on this fact, the new educa-
tion fills the brain with music and song; it teaches the child
to draw and color, and thereby gives him a taste which, while
positively refining in its direct influence, is also subtly devel-
oping a deep-rooted appreciation for the glories of nature and
art undreamed of before. Through his young brain, instead
of the vile jests and repulsive stories of the street, float strains of
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THE NEW EDUCATION. 527
melody, breathing sentiments of patriotism, of noble attainments,
and of love. He sees the glory of the sunset with a sense of
keen delight, whereas before he never so much as noticed the
splendor of the greatest of all artists. Every flower possesses a
new charm. The art galleries and museums have for him an
interest far greater than the saloon holds for his father. In a
word, the influence of this new education has been the practical
carrying out of the divine injunction to "overcome evil with
good." The teacher has opened the window of the soul, and
revealed a new world, whose pure pleasures exalt and will prove
a rich heritage through life. This is one marked tendency of the
new education, and this is the influence exerted to a greater or
less degree by music, drawing, color work, and modelling, which
the enemies of the new education contemptuously dismissed as
useless " fads."
The new education fully recognizes the value of book learning,
but at the same time guards against that pedantic reverence for
books and for ancient thought which tends to make imitators. It
fronts the dawn rather than the evening. It stimulates the
inventive and creative spirit by teaching the child in the
primary school to manufacture boxes, and to model in clay. It
also thus early in life establishes a right idea in regard to the
dignity of manual labor, and gives an added interest to the com-
mon things of life. The child who makes a little box in school
finds a pleasure and interest in the large box on the street, not
known before.
Secondly, it develops the capacity for enjoying the highest
and most elevating pleasures by the introduction of music, draw-
ing, painting, and modelling, and by calling constantly into the
mind noble and pure ideals.
Thirdly, it develops the physical body, and gives easy grace
and refinement to its every movement.
It is an intelligent and scientific attempt, based on practical
experience and undisputed facts, to develop the body, so that the
pupil may carry an atmosphere of health through life ; to illumi-
nate the brain, giving not only a trained intellect, but a mind
capable of forming independent judgment ; to cultivate the higher
riature, that the finest sentiments of life and the most real sources
of delight may be fully appreciated by the awakened soul, and
thus to give to the republic a normal manhood and womanhood.
The old systems were fashioned too nearly upon the ideal
popular in Greece at the time when Christianity almost lost her
primitive character in Grecian speculation. At that period,
observed the late Professor Edwin Hatch, D. D., of Oxford
University, " Her schools, instead of being the laboratories of the
knowledge of the future^ were forges in rohich the chains of the
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528 THE ABENA.
present were fashioned from the knoicledge of the past" The
new education appreciates this serious flaw, and seeks to
remedy it.
The old has proven fatally defective in many particulars ; the
new seeks to remedy these shortcomings. The old was a
magnificent stride towards universal enlightenment; the new
stands for developed humanity. The old bears much the same
relation to the new that a fleshless skeleton bears to a man -with
life pulsing through every fibre of his body, and brain luminous
with wisdom and love.
Instead of depriving the public schools of the new education,
its fullest expression should be welcomed. The kindergarten
should become a part of every public school system, and a deter-
mined demand should be made that the child of the humblest
citizen may have the advantages of the best schools in the land
from the hour that the little toddler is able to enter the kinder-
garten until he has reached his fourteenth year ; and during this
period every practical means should be employed to develop a
robust body, a clean soul, a healthy brain, and a noble character.
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f/ ^^^^.
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THE ARENA.
No. XLVII.
OCTOBER, 1893.
TIE PSYCHOLOGY OF CRIME.
BY HENRY WOOD.
Every outward manifestation is a harvest. No full-
fledged or overt act takes place that is not the lawful
sequence of previous incubation, nourishment, and growth.
When a criminal offence " happens," the usual concern is
only with the event, its details, and the adequate punishment
of the offender. The act is vividly outlined, its heinous
features are analyzed, the guilt of its supposed author is
passed upon, and a demand is made for the enforcement of
the proper penalty. This comprises all that society feels
called upon to do in the premises. A blow has been dealt
to the community, in one of its parts, and the community
deals a proportionate one in return, and thus the transaction
is closed and the books are balanced. Possibly some
" motive " may be discovered, which forms the last or imme-
diate step behind the act, but further back, or in broader
scope, neither general nor special investigation is thought
necessary.
While the deeper research may not be practicable offi-
cially, it is of great importance that there should be a more
general and intelligent appreciation of the processes through
which crime and disorder are generated. The superficial
and objective spirit of our western civilization is unfavorable
for a thorough study of primary and subjective causation.
The Within that finds expression in the Without lies hidden
away from the popular gaze, and only through some applica-
tion of psychological law can it be clearly interpreted.
Copyrighted 1883, by the Arena Publishing Co. 529
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530 THE ABENA.
No criminal motive ever grows in weight so that it finally
preponderates, except by slow and intangible accretions.
However spontaneous or impulsive any given offence may
appear, in its method, the foundation upon which it rears
itself has been slowly formed from a variety of sediment.
The great lesson of modern science is that nothing "hap-
pens." Everything that comes is pushed from behind. This
philosophy, which is accepted by all careful thinkers, and
perhaps theoretically by a wider circle, is yet far from being
acknowledged as a practical truism. We live under an
economy of law absolutely universal in its scope ; but while
no chain of detail includes the least element of chance, there
is no fatalism involved in this perfect order. On the con-
trary, all real freedom comes only from its aid, and through
intelligent conformity. Law is always in readiness to serve
us, but we must adopt its methods.
There is no pessimism involved in a study of the genera-
tion of crime, for the very laws and forces which by
abnormal use bring it into expression, are abundantly potent,
when rightly used, for the production of its normal and
wholesome opposites. While recognizing an upward trend
as broad as humanity, and an optimism which views " evil "
only as a subjective condition, yet it is evident that there
are operative, at the present time, special forces that directly
germinate crime and disorder. It is said that about seven
thousand murders have taken place within the limits of the
United States during the last year, and offences of lesser
degree have been so numerous that even an approximate
estimate can hardly be formed. However, we are dealing not
with statistics but principles.
The luxury and artificialism of our modern civilization,
the struggle fo.r wealth and social position, the pursuit of
sensuous gratification — all of these are powerful factors
which disintegrate character, obscure high ideals, and bring
disorder and abnormity into overt manifestation. But per-
haps a more potent element of demoralization than any of
those above enumerated, is found in the deluge of delineated
criminality and other morbid reading matter, in which the
community mentally dwells, the malaria of which it is con-
stantly inhaling. This great, unceasing supply of unsound
mental pabulum comes in the forms of offensive sensational-
ism in the daily press, flashy illustrated weeklies, and the
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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CRIME. 531
cheap "blood and thunder" fiction which is devoured in
unlimited quantities by youthful and immature minds.
That a large ratio of space in the great dailies is crowded
with matter that in varying degree may be classed as abnormal
and unwholesome, is a palpable and unquestioned fact. It is
also quite unnecessary to prove the existence of the flashy
illustrated weeklies. Their numbers and suggestiveness are
evidenced by the gaping crowds always seen gathered
about the news-shop windows, gazing at pictorial representa-
tions which are as near the border line of indecency as it is
possible to be and escape the law. The world is full of
" suggestion " of every quality. That which is distinctively
classed as " hypnotic " is, in quantity, but "a drop in the
bucket " when compared with the every-day variety.
The sediment which settles from all these turbid agitations
furnishes the soil out of which murders, suicides, sexual
immoralities, thefts, and numberless other disorders are the
continual growth and fruitage. If unsound meat or decayed
vegetables are palmed off upon the public, the guilty offender
is arrested and punished ; but youthful and pure conscious-
ness may be invaded and poisoned, and all is taken as a
matter of course. Society concerns itself considerably with
the punishment of crime, but very little with its prevention.
The punishment for overt criminality is conventionally
supposed to act as a powerful deterrent, but it has only a
limited power in that direction. While government — or
organized society — cannot take legal cognizance of anything
less than overt acts, it is important that there should be a
general and intelligent knowledge of the constructive process
through which criminals are made. They do not come by
chance, but grow, and their growth is through suggestion.
The immediate psychical impulse which precedes the overt
act is but one link in a chain which reaches back indefinitely.
Society in general is responsible for its criminality. Its
criminals are not detached units on the outside, but rather
eruptions from within. The circulation of the body politic
is impure. Prevailing morbid thoughts and ideas naturally
find embodiment, an illustrative specimen of which was seen
in Guiteau, the slayer of President Garfield. As well cut
off an occasional thistle head with the expectation of killing
the crop, as hope to exterminate crime through the deterrent
power of penalty.
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532 THE ABENA.
The lack of moral and social progress is due to a prevail-
ing sensuous superficiality, which concerns itself only with
phenomena instead of deep causative forces. Criminality is
purely expressive and symptomatic. The laws of mind are
unswerving and exact. Mental conditions, including all
qualities of thought and suggestion, tend to outward expres-
sion. To illustrate: An atrocious murder takes place. The
daily press, by full detail and embellishment, graphically
engraves it, with all its suggestiveness, upon the public con-
sciousness. Its passion and abnormity are held up and
analyzed until they permeate the whole psychic atmosphere.
The criminal is surrounded by the halo of romance and the
glamor of notoriety. His likeness is given a prominent
place in a leading column, and is thus brought before the
eyes of unnumbered thousands. And, recently, modern
" enterprise " reproduces the whole scene — as supposed —
not omitting the weapons. A mental picture of the tout
ensemble is thus photographed upon all minds and memories.
The details are read, reread, and discussed. Where there is
any mind containing, in any degree, a chord of savagery,
animalism, or morbidity, it is stirred into corresponding
vibration. Possibly some, who have been near the verge of
a similar act, are pushed over the line. But no one escapes
untarnished. The soundest and sanest minds cannot thus
have the imaging faculty tampered with, without some
deterioration, even though it be unconscious.
In the evolutionary transition from primeval or animal
man to humanity, there has been brought over a large
residuum of animality, and this forms a kind of false self
which is stirred and stimulated by outward morbid sugges-
tion. A pugilistic encounter, a street fight, or even a dog
fight will, as if by magic, draw a crowd, much as a magnet
will gather iron filings. In many cases a man seems to be
but a thin veneer to the animal within, the latter often break-
ing through from outside suggestion. The occasional boy
who starts out with hatchet and pistol to rob, or fight with
Indians, as suggested by mental pictures drawn from the
great juvenile library of " blood and thunder " fiction, only
goes somewhat farther in the same direction than all other
boys travel who live upon the same mental stimulant.
The Borden murder and trial furnished a striking illustra-
tion of the extent to which a single tragic event can fill the
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THE PSYCHOLOGY OP CRIME. 533
public mind and consciousness. The official trial of the
accused party was but little more exhaustive than thousands
of unofficial trials which took place in drawing-rooms and
business offioes. But this is by no means solely the fault
of publishers and editors. The public taste needs to be
rectified. Every one who reads, dwells upon, and rehearses
auch a quality of thought, is in some measure responsible.
All this is common, not because of any intention to give
currency to that which is unwholesome, but from a lack of
knowledge of psychological laws and the power of sugges-
tion. A true understanding of mental philosophy is all that
is needed. As soon as we intelligently grasp the laws of
any force or thing, we have it not only under control but
harnessed for use. The principles of suggestion, like edged
tools, when rightly used are of wonderful utility. Its power
to project high ideals is unlimited, but it recoils when
misdirected.
The modern " daily " possesses a gigantic power to mould
and color public consciousness, and its conduct involves a
very grave responsibility, which its managers either lightly
regard or are quite unaware of, but, after all, it is but an
articulation of that which preponderates in human thought.
A majority want sensationalism, and supply always responds
to demand. But if rapid money making could be made
secondary, the daily press would be an immense educational
and uplifting force in society. In general observations, it
would be unjust to intimate that all papers are on the same
plane, for there are all grades and qualities. Principles only
are here considered, and when once understood they will
make their own application discriminately. The purveyors
of the daily press cannot be expected to be disinterested
philanthropists, more than other men, though their power is
gigantic and their responsibility peculiar. As things are,
the main hope for reform must begin with the public, or on
the side of demand. The great need is a more intelligent
understanding of the psychological laws of suggestion and
subjective realism as causative forces. Results can only be
modified through internal and underlying antecedents, and
not by mere external repression.
The mechanical and news-gathering facilities of a great
modern daily are marvellous. It is comparatively a new and
unprecedented force, for no former period <?an be compared
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584 THE ARENA.
with it. But, gentlemen of the daily press, why is it that
under the plea of " enterprise " or giving " the news," a
murder in California, a robbery in Arkansas, or some name-
less outrage in Alabama should be put in thought pictures,
framed, and hung up in the mental chambers of millions,
where high ideals are scarce for lack of room ? Why should
the horrors of lynchings, the morbidity of suicides, or even
the details of catastrophes be branded upon thousands of
sensitive souls where their scars will be indelible? A
material photograph may be destroyed in an instant, while
an immaterial one, printed by the imaging faculty, may
remain for a lifetime, often forcing its way into the conscious-
ness uncalled for or even when forbidden.
When the wise man uttered the familiar aphorism, " As a
man thinketh in his heart, so is he," he expressed not merely
a moral maxim but a scientific truism. What men mentally
dwell upon they become or grow like. Thought, even when
centred upon a non-entity, in proportion to its intensity and
continuity, confers subjective realism. Not by chance but
by law, each mental delineation leaves its distinctive hue in
the grand composite which makes up character. The undis-
ciplined thinking faculty has a sponge-like absorbability of
the medium which surrounds it, and only by systematic
idealism can it be trained to close its avenues against dis-
cordant and depressing environment. Thought projected in
specific directions soon forms its own channels, which are
rapidly deepened by habit. When turned upon the pure,
the true, and the beautiful, these positives soon cast out their
negative opposites. When Paul urged the importance of
thinking upon " these things," he showed himself to be a
metaphysician and scientist as well as a religious apostle.
The quality of thinking determines consciousness, and
consciousness forms character. Character is, therefore, noth-
ing more nor less than a habitual quality of consciousness.
It is often supposed to consist of action, but it is that which
is back of action. Any demoralization which comes from
without does not come direct, but from the sympathetic
vibration of corresponding unisons within. Action is often
temporarily modified from motives of outward policy, but its
constant effort is to become a true copy of the inner pattern.
The scientific way to destroy evil is not to hold it up and
analyze it in order to niake it hateful, but rather to put it
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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CRIME. 535
out of the consciousness. To the degree that one does not
see it, to him it becomes non-existent, because there is noth-
ing to arouse its vibrations within. But it is important to
remember that evil is real only as a subjective condition.
Whether or not we so wish, we are modified by every
picture thrown upon the mental canvas. No matter to what
extent one may detest a crime, he cannot immerse his con-
sciousness in its turbid waves yrithout taking on some of
its slime and sediment.
But outside of what is distinctively classed as crime, the
outpicturing of everything of a negative or inharmonious
nature is unprofitable. The frictions, accidents, discords,
and every other lack of harmony, of whatever name, occupy
room in the consciousness which is of value. A thousand
objective normal human developments attract no attention,
while the single abnormity is put in the lens and thrown
upon the screen. Its kind is thereby propagated. Occa-
sional " outs " are made so important that they almost appear
to be the rule. Reform will come only so fast as the neces-
sity for more ideal mental pictures is appreciated. All real
entities were formed by the Creator, and all are good, so that
the abnormal when displaced from the human consciousness
finds no resting place.
The real world we dwell in is our thought world, rather
than the material objects which surround us. The color of
all outward environment depends upon the glasses through
which we view it. The human consciousness is like an end-
less corridor in a picture gallery, each visitor executing and
hanging his own works of art. His preference is determined
by the character of those before which he lingers.
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A READY FINANCIAL RELIEF.
BY W. H. VAN ORNTJM.
It is daily becoming more and more evident that whatever
relief is to be hoped for from the present condition of finan-
cial stringency and business stagnation, must come from the
efforts of business men themselves, and not from any action
of either Congress or the bankers. Even if the wisest laws
should be adopted at the coming session of Congress, it will
take months to bring them into operation so as to afford any
relief^ during which time thousands of fortunes will be
wrecked and the present hard times be intensified. But
there is slight reason to expect even wise legislation. Every
change in the law always affects, favorably or unfavorably,
great private or corporate interests, which seek to protect
themselves by every means possible, regardless of all others.
Thus any attempted legislation, in any direction, must bring
about a clash of these rival interests, in which the interests
of the people will become of secondary consideration. Under
the influence of these clashing elements, often wholly un-
scrupulous as to the means they adopt to further their ends,
the chances for the enactment of wise laws are reduced to a
minimum. In view of these facts it becomes perfectly evi-
dent that those representing the real business interests of
the country must look to themselves for whatever relief is to
be found.
It is just as evident that our trouble arises wholly from a
want of currency with which to do the business of the
country. Either one or the other of two things is true —
there is not enough currency in existence, or else it is so
controlled as to prevent its circulating and performing its
proper functions. It is of no consequence which of these
must bear the blame. In either case our financial system is
at fault. Business men cannot obtain their accustomed
accommodation at the banks, no matter what amount of
collateral they may have, so that failures are reported every
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A READY FINANCIAL* BELIEF. 637
day where the assets greatly exceed the liabilities.* Even
the banks suffer from the same cause. It is a remarkable
feature of the present crisis that probably a majority of the
failed banks have gone under from no fault in their business
methods, as banks go, but because of inability to realize on
assets in time to meet demands; in other words, from a want
of currency. I think it is easily demonstrable that the
present financial crisis — and probably all others which have
ever existed — comes from inherent faults in the system
of banking itself and from a false basis of currency.
The first step in the treatment of any case is the diagnosis.
Let us see what a diagnosis will give as to the nature and
function of money, and the cause of its scarcity. Money —
stripped of all its excrescences, such as " standard of value,"
44 intrinsic " or commodity value, etc., which are but remind-
ers and remainders of the time when all exchange was a
barter exchange — is purely a certificate of credit, which
certifies to the world that the holder is entitled to take
just so much of the goods of the world as that certificate calls
for, at his own option. The value of the certificate depends
wholly upon the certainty of its being honored, and not
upon the material of which it is composed. It may be
stamped upon a piece of metal or printed upon a piece of
paper. It adds nothing to the value of the credit to make
the certificate itself expensive. A bank check calls for a
certain amount of money specified in its face. It would not
bring any more if the check was made of gold. It would
only add to the expense of business to decree that all checks
should be stamped upon gold pieces.
In the function that money performs, it is a tool or imple-
ment of trade, an indispensable tool, which facilitates ex-
change and avoids the inconvenience and expense of a
barter exchange. Whenever any person or class is given a
monopoly in its production or management, it becomes pos-
sible for that person or class to lay an embargo upon trade
for the time being. When they say " No," it cannot be con-
ducted, for want of the necessary tools.
• The Chicago Tribune of July 21 contained the following in its financial article : —
** So far as the local situation is concerned it is practically just what it has been for
some days. There is no money market. No loans are made as merely a matter of busi-
ness because a man wants to borrow money and has proper collateral to offer as
security. Bank accommodations are to be had only by those people who have special
claims, and the mere offering of ample security will by no means bring out a loan.
Money is just as tight as it has been at any time, nor is there any immediate prospect
of an improvement in that direction. It seems certain that we will turn into August
with the situation quite as stringent as it was at the beginning of July."
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538 THE ARENA.
By making the production of money a government func-
tio'n, it is brought at once within the domain of politics, and
subjected to all the influences which control politics. Then
where there is a separate class whose business it is to deal in
money, the members of which, as a class, are not engaged in
the production or exchange of wealth, and therefore are not
the ones who must use it in its proper function, and whose
interest it is to limit the supply in order to increase the
price, the foundation is laid for all the abuses of currency
manipulation. The present currency is issued by the gov-
ernment, based upon its own power to compel the people to
honor its certificates, instead of by the people who are to use
those certificates, based upon their own abilities and interests
to honor them. It represents force instead of co-operative
interest and ability.
Now let us see where the fault is in the system of banking.
A merchant or manufacturer must have ready at hand at all
times, a certain amount of currency to meet the requirements
of his trade, according to its character and volume. But he
must have some place of safe-keeping, which is also con-
venient in paying it out on account. For that reason he
deposits it in the bank, against which deposit he draws his
checks from time to time as required. The things which he
seeks are security for his funds and facility in payment.
But in order to get these he runs the risk of losing his
money. He, in effect, says to the banker : " I do not wish
to use this money just now. I will let you take it and use
it in your business until I want it. I will not exact any
security from you. You may speculate with it as you like.
All I ask is that you give me the facilities that I require."
Sometimes the banks do allow a small rate of interest; but
that amounts to an added stimulus to the banker to take
risks with the customer's money in order to realize a profit.
In this way bankers are enabled to borrow, often many times
over the amount of capital invested by themselves in busi-
ness, to enable them to carry on speculations for their own
profit, and without giving the slightest security. Here is
the greatest possible temptation to those who are inclined to
be dishonest, to carry out their inclinations.
But aside from any question of dishonesty, the banker is
expected to make use of a large proportion of his deposits in
order to bring profit to himself. That is his capital in busi-
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A BEADY FINANCIAL RELIEF. 539
ness. It is manifest that the safety of even the best-man-
aged banks depends upon the continuance of the public
confidence, so that they are not called upon to restore, all at
once, the capital they have borrowed as deposits. But along
with this condition go others which are certain to shake that
confidence and bring about that demand. The unwise
basis of the currency itself, which has already been men-
tioned, makes manipulations of it possible through the con-
certed action of large banking institutions, aided by political
allies, by locking up money in aid of stock and other specu-
lations, so that a condition of stringency can be produced at
will, to the serious embarrassment of business. If, at a time
of such tension, a few banking houses are forced under,
alarm is awakened, and men rush to get their money, perhaps
to find that it is not there. The bankers have done just
what, in effect, the depositors told them they might do —
used it in their business. That element which is always
present to an extent, the dishonest and fraudulent bank, is
only so much more tinder to hasten the conflagration. The
conditions are all there for a great fire, and the only question
ever is, how long it will be delayed.
In view of these facts, it is plain that no act of Congress
can possibly bring the slightest relief from the present finan-
cial stringency. The evil is too deep seated to be reached
by any tinkering with remonetization of silver, gold bond
issues, repeal of the Sherman Act, or any other measure.
Financial panics have occurred at irregular but short inter-
vals for the last five hundred years in every civilized country
in the world, and will continue under any government con-
trol, no matter what form of currency may be authorized by
governments, and so long as the present system of banking
prevails.
But why should business men depend upon government to
furnish or sanction any particular form of currency ? And
why should they continue to furnish capital to the banks,
without security, on which to carry on their speculations, at
the customers' risk and the bankers' profit? It is entirely
unnecessary. So far as a currency goes, the New York and
Chicago clearing houses have recently set an example which
business men ought not to be slow to follow. They have
put out, for temporary purposes, clearing-house certificates,
8ome say as high as $23,000,000 in JJew York alone, which
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640 THE ARENA.
are only certificates of credit, having the backing of the asso-
ciated banks, and which are perfectly good, so far as they go,
for all purposes of money.
There is nothing to hinder business men from doing the
same thing. They can form mutual associations for their
own convenience and credit, to facilitate their own busi-
ness. Each member can be rated for credit according to
his financial ability or business probity, being guided by the
same considerations as now enable the banks to determine
the credit of customers. Then let the association issue to
each member respectively certificates of credit, in denomina-
tions corresponding to the present paper currency, to the full
amount of the credit allowed, which will circulate as money,
backed by the credit of the whole association. These certifi-
cates should show that they are receivable by any member of
the association, for all bills or accounts due such members,
and in payment for all services rendered or goods purchased;
in short, let every member guarantee to receive and treat
them precisely like any other money. The association will
constitute a co-operative bank for the benefit of its members,
in which the certificates of credit will be deposited, to be
checked against or added to in new deposits like any other
bank account. The bank, being for the mutual convenience
of its members, need not and ought not to make a profit. It
should discount no notes, deal in no securities, exact no
interest, or in any way risk the money of its members. For
the running expenses, each member should pay enough to
cover the cost of the individual service to him, which can be
based upon the volume of his credits ; and in an association
of even moderate proportions, that need not exceed a very
small part of one per cent annually.
There is no reason why an association of merchants, manu-
facturers, and other business and professional men should
not be able to do what an association of bankers can do.
And if the issue of certificates of credit by the bankers is
good as a temporary convenience, there seems to be no reason
why the same thing is not equally good as a permanent ar-
rangement, when done by the men themselves who are to
use them. In fact, this furnishes a key to the solution of
the whole financial question.
An association in any city or town may quickly be
extended tQ include every business or profession of any
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A READY FINANCIAL ftfiLtEF. 541
importance in that town. The larger the association, the
more generally confidence will be inspired and its certifi-
cates will circulate. The less, too, will be the proportion
of its running expenses to its volume of business. It will
place the currency beyond the power of any combination
whatever to manipulate it for speculative or other purposes.
It will remove all the objectionable features of the present
banking system. Every man's deposit will be inviolate,
remaining to his own credit in the bank until he uses it
himself. No man will have occasion to discount his own
note, because, if it is good, he will be able to get the cur-
rency on it without interest or discount. There can never
arise any financial stringency, because the volume of the
currency will always keep pace with the needs of trade.
It will relieve business of the terrible incubus of interest,
which amounts to an enormous tax, hampering it in a
thousand ways; and will completely do away with "wild
cat " banks and banking. It will do away with the bad and
uncertain features of the credit system, abolish promiscuous
credits, and reduce trade practically to a cash basis, while
avoiding the harsh features of a strictly cash system. If a
man is entitled to credit, he will be able to get it in
certificates, which he can use as cash in all purchases.
Other advantages which these associations will possess are,
that they can be started as easily as Building and Loan
Associations can be, and their workings will be quite as
simple. They do not depend upon any act of Congress
or the administration to make them practical. It is not even
necessary to obtain a state charter; in fact, it is better not to
have one. By organizing under a state law it may be con-
sidered a state bank, and so brought under the Act of Con-
gress levying a tax of ten per cent upon state bank issues.
By organizing as a co-operative association without charter,
it will stand on the same footing as a private partnership for
specific purposes, with each member as a partner. The asso-
ciation (or firm) has a perfect right to issue its firm notes to
the members of that association if it chooses, and on such
terms as it chooses. Whatever the members of the firm do
with those notes the association has no concern. The asso-
ciation itself will have no dealings with the community at
large, and therefore will not be liable to the ten per cent
tax. The only advantage which a charter can confer is to
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."42 THE ARENA.
limit the liability. But an association should seek to
strengthen the liability, in order to give greater confidence
in its currency, so that, if people go about it in a proper
way, they can begin issuing their certificates within thirty
days ; and relief from hard times will date from that
moment.
The formation of one such association will quickly be
followed by others all over t&e country; and almost imme-
diately the prevailing hard times will be relieved in a per-
manent and satisfactory way. Then Congress may pass
whatever laws it pleases bearing upon the present bankers'
currency. It may make it plenty or scarce, high priced
or low. It may establish an exclusive gold basis, or restore
silver to its ancient position in the coinage. It will not
affect these associations one whit. No one will be obliged
to take the bankers' money for ordinary purposes if he does
not wish to, because he can get other just as good, at least,
and cheaper. For extraordinary purposes, such as where
contracts have been made stipulating that payments are to
be made in gold, it is only necessary to point out that the
general adoption of this plan will reduce the demand for
gold, as a currency, almost to zero, and so cheapen its price
and make it easier to obtain than now.
Among the farmers there is a demand for government
loans at two per cent on the security of their farms and
products. But what is much better, let the farmers form
associations of this kind, with such business men of their
towns as they wish to do business with, and then establish
exchange relations with other associations in the cities, so
that their certificates will circulate generally and buy every-
thing that they want, which will give them money with-
out any interest at all, and without waiting to force
concessions from unwilling politicians and money mongers.
They do not need to wait to secure control of the gov-
ernment before they can obtain even better than their
sub-treasury scheme.
Already steps are being taken in Chicago for the estab-
lishment of such an association, and it is meeting with
remarkable success. It is expected that within a few weeks,
at most, it will be in full operation. It has received very
slight notice from the daily press, because that press is so
largely under the influence of existing banking interests.
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A BEADY FINANCIAL RELIEF. 543
But many of the trade and farm papers have taken it up
warmly, and are using their columns freely to promote it.
They recognize that it will not only end our present finan-
cial troubles, but prevent a recurrence of them by removing
the causes which produce financial disturbances.
It is not expected that all this will be brought about
without a struggle. Already the epithet "wild cat" has
been hurled at the scheme, but it does not stick. And
besides, the present panic has uncovered too many wild
cats among existing or recent banks for this to have much
force as an argument against reform. But one thing is cer-
tain, that the plan is so simple and easy of application, and
the reform is so sweeping, that men recognize that it is
worth trying. Not the least among the benefits to be derived
is that men will be taught to look to their own efforts
for relief from evils, instead of depending upon a lot of
politicians, called government, to obtain it for them.
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JUDGE GARY AND THE ANARCHISTS.
BY M. M. TRUMBULL.
After the so-called Chicago anarchists have been six
years in the grave, Judge Gary grants them a new trial, in
a forum of his own selection, The Century Magazine. In
this new trial he performs all the duties of judge, jury, prose-
cuting attorney and sole witness. In each and every char-
acter he is consistently partial, prejudiced, and unfair. He
is always against the prisoners.
Whether it was remorse or politics or self defence that
inspired the article, matters not, but it must have been a
strong motive, because it is not usual for judges, after pun-
ishing men with death, to try them over again in a pictorial
magazine, and such a novelty is a breach of judicial decorum
that goes far to justify a suspicion that the original trial was
not fair.
In this post mortem trial, Judge Gary appears as a witness
knowing that he is exempt from the test of' cross examinar
tion. He is not sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth- He is privileged to tell just as much
and as little of the truth as may please him, and to tell it
in his own way.
If Judge Gary desired candidly to invoke the calm judg-
ment of his readers, why did he try to move their feelings
by sensational pictures? What use other than to excite
the emotions could he have had for those theatrical bits of
art, " The Jury Going to the Court House," " Turning back
the Anarchists," " Captain Ward Commands the Crowd to
Disperse," "The Monument to the Martyred Police," and
all the rest of it? Why divert the attention by portraits,
especially the portraits of seven bombs, two of them
" poisoned bombs " ? Judge Gary finds it easier to inflame
the passions than to convince the judgment, and therefore he
imitates the lawyer-like tactics adopted by the prosecution at
the trial.
Explaining his reasons for writing the article, Judge
Gary says: —
644
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JtTDGE GARY AND THE ANABCHISTS. 545
The motive, then, or at least the principal motive, of this paper is
to demonstrate to my own profession, and to make plain to all fair-
minded, intelligent people, that the verdict of the jury in the case of
the anarchists was right; that the anarchists were guilty of murder;
that they were not the victims of prejudice, nor martyrs for free
speech, but in morals as well as in law were guilty of murder.
Therein is an unfortunate admission that after having had
seven years to think of it, the bar of Illinois is not satisfied
that the verdict was right; and as nobody else will do it,
the hard necessity is thrown upon Judge Gary himself to
" demonstrate " in a magazine article to his own profession
that the anarchists were guilty of murder. This is a humili-
ation to which no other judge has descended in our time.
Before Judge Gary can " demonstrate " anything, he must
first reverse himself, and contradict this letter which he
wrote to the governor of Illinois: —
Chicago, 111., Nov. 8, 1887.
To the Honorable Richard F. Oglesby, Governor, etc.
Sir: On the application of Samuel Fielden for a commutation of
his sentence, it is not necessary as to the case itself that I should do
more than refer to the decision of the Supreme Court for a history of
his crime.
Outside of what is there shown, there is in the nature and private
character of the man, a natural love of justice, an impatience at
all undeserved suffering, an impulsive temper, and an intense love
of and thirst for the applause of his hearers made him an advocate
of force as a heroic remedy for the hardship that the poor endure.
In his own private life he was the honest, industrious, and peaceable
laboring man.
In what he said in court before sentence he was respectful and
decorous. His language and conduct since have been irreproach-
able. As there is no evidence that he knew of any preparation to
do the specific act of throwing the bomb that killed Degan, he
does not understand even now that general advice to large masses
to do violence makes him responsible for the violence done by
reason of that advice, nor that being joined by others in an effort
to subvert law and order by force makes him responsible for the
acts of those others tending to make that effort effectual.
In short, he was more a misguided enthusiast than a criminal, *
conscious of the horrible nature and effect of his teachings, and of
his responsibility therefor. What shall be done in his case is partly
a question of humanity and partly a question of state policy, upon
which it seems to me action on the part of your excellency favorable
to him is justifiable.
I attach this to a copy of his petition to your excellency, and refer
to that for what he says of the change that has come upon himself.
Respectfully yours, etc.,
Joseph E. Gary.
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&4(> THE AJtENl.
The condemnation of Judge Gary lies in the words,
" There is no evidence that he knew of any preparation to do
the specific act of throwing the bomb that killed Degan" Did
the judge not know that when he overruled Fielden's motion
for a new trial, and sentenced him to die upon the scaffold ?
Did he just find it out on Nov. 8, 1887? In that letter
Judge Gary justifies and gives emphasis to all the censure
that has been thrown upon him for his conduct at the trial.
Why did he not give to the jury the opinion that he gave to
the governor ? That letter leaves nothing on which to base
Fielden's conviction, except "general advice to large masses
to do violence"; in other words, what in law is called "se-
dition." He was sentenced to death for what the Supreme
Court, in affirming the sentence, called his "queer doctrines."
' Fielden's exculpation covers all the others. It was a part
of the case, and a very important part of it, that Fielden was
the principal that fateful night, and the others his accom-
plices. He was actually speaking when the bomb was
thrown; it was affirmed by witnesses that he said, " Kill the
law, stab the law, throttle the law"; that when the police
appeared he said, " Here come the bloodhounds, you do your
duty and I will do mine"; that when the police captain gave
the order to disperse, Fielden gave the signal for throwing
th6 bomb, "We are peaceable," and immediately began firing
his revolver at the police. More than that, it was made the
excuse for the coming of the police, that after the mayor left
the meeting, Fielden's talk became so inflammatory and
dangerous that they were compelled to interfere. It was
pretended that " peaceable " was equivalent to the German
word " Ruke" and that " Ruke " was a call to arms.
That the excuse and the testimony were false is the tragic
part of it. They were urged upon the jury as true by the
prosecuting attorney, the jury accepted them as true, Judge
Gary himself reasserted the truth of them when he overruled
the motion for a new trial, and the Supreme Court in sus-
taining the judgment adopted the mistake. With deadly
precision the Supreme Court proclaimed that there was evi-
dence to show that Fielden had knowledge of the preparation
to do the specific act of throwing the bomb; but Judge Gary,
contradicting the Supreme Court, assured the governor that
there was no such evidence.
The sophistry that convicted Spies and Parsons as Fielden's
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JUDGE GAR* AND THE ANARCHISMS. 64?
accomplices was concealed in some changeable and contra-
dictory conspiracies that were invented by the prosecution
and adopted by the judge; then whatever was said or done
by the mythical conspirators was metaphysically said and
done by all the others, and as Fielden had given the signal
to throw the bomb and had fired upon the police, therefore
Spies and Parsons were psychologically accessories before
the fact. In that way false testimony against Fielden was
spun into threads by the law spiders, and woven by Judge
Gary into a rope for Spies, Engel, Fischer, and Parsons.
Judge Gary with pen and picture puts the jury on parade,
and while he metaphorically marches it along to slow music,
perhaps it would be well to examine it, "ranging in age
from fifty-three years down to early manhood." It was a
jury packed by the prosecution, and the selection of it was in
the hands of a mere bailiff dependent for his office on the
whim of the sheriff. Three fourths of it were dependents
on the " classes " who were clamoring for the hanging of the
anarchists, " law or no law " ; two of the jurors were in
business for themselves, and one was a school teacher; the
other nine were clerks and salesmen, two of them in the
employ of the Northwestern Railroad Company. This may
have been very innocent and fair, but wealthy and powerful
as that corporation is, it was hardly entitled to so large a
representation on the jury. The classes to which the
prisoners belonged were excluded from the jury altogether.
In that rendition scene so melodramatically ' portrayed,
there was one incident which Judge Gary has left out of his
pictures, but which history will preserve. So long as the
record of the trial shall stand, men will read with a shudder
that the judge thanked the jury for a verdict that condemned
seven of their fellow citizens to death, and told the jurymen
that they ought to have a private pecuniary reward. Here
is what he said : " It does not become me to say anything in
regard to the case that you have tried, or the verdict you
have rendered, but men compulsorily serving as jurors as you
have done deserve some recognition of the service you have
performed besides the meagre compensation you are to
receive." That hint was eagerly seized by the press, and
immediately the papers were eloquent with calls for a fund
amounting to one hundred thousand dollars to be given to
the jury for their verdict. Probably nothing ever came of
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548 THE ARENA.
that; but the covert call of Judge Gary, made at the most
pathetic moment of the trial, put the tragedy on a money
basis, and lowered the dignity of the judge and the jury too.
While the wives and children of the condemned men were
shrieking and fainting because of the barbarity of the
sentence, Judge Gaiy, cold and calculating, was telling the
jury that they ought to have a reward besides the " meagre
compensation " provided by the law.
Moreover, the jury was illegal because men were placed
upon it who declared themselves prejudiced against the
defendants, but who were led by Judge Gary to say that
they could try the case fairly outside their prejudices. Judge
Gary held that the promise cured the prejudice, a doctrine
that practically took away from the defendants their chal-
lenges for cause. That ruling the Supreme Court sustained,
because it was necessary to sustain anything to hang the
anarchists. After the anarchists were put to death there
was no longer any reason to preserve the innovation, and so
the Supreme Court reversed it in the Cronin case. If the
jury in the Cronin case was illegal, so was the jury in the
anarchist case.
As soon as the anarchists were in their graves, and the
mad passions of the hour had subsided, the bar awoke from
sycophancy with alarm, perceiving that the law in the
anarchist case was the overthrow of trial by jury in Illinois,
and some of the judges even went so far as to demand its
restoration in the following manifesto : —
Hie jury system is valuable in so far as it yields impartial juries ,
and when it does so it is invaluable; when it fails to do this it is per-
niciou8 and dangerous. To be impartial the jury should be selected
from all honest walks of life — from the body of the people — and in
such manner as to preclude their being selected or excluded because
of race, color, creed, or political opinions. This can be done by using
a method of selection in accord with existing provisions of the law,
and that will prevent any of the public agents charged with the duty
of furnishing jurors for courts from saying beforehand what indi-
viduals are to be placed on or debarred from the jury list.
All citizens possessing the legal qualifications of competent jurors
prescribed by the statute constitute the body of the people from
which trial juries should be drawn. The following suggestions show
how this can be done, and done in such a way that impartiality and
honesty can be secured. Taking the precincts one by one, write the
names and residences of all the voters of a precinct on separate cards
and place these in a box, and, in the presence of a committee from
the county board and the county clerk, let there be drawn from the
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JUDGE GARY AND THE ANARCHISTS. 549
box j after the cards bearing the names have been well shaken up, a
number of the names equal to one tenth of the whole number in the
box. The cards bearing the names and residences of the one tenth
of the whole body of the citizens thus selected from each and every
precinct in the county to constitute the jury list, all to be placed in a
large box, to be known as the jury-box, to be provided for that pur-
pose, the same to be then thoroughly shaken, such a box to be in the
custody of the county clerk. Thereafter the clerks of the various
courts, as jurors are needed for the term or on special venire (if the
court directs), are to proceed to the county clerk's office and draw at
random, a sufficient number of names from said box, as provided by
section 8 of the statute on jurors.
When the jurors appear in court the judge is to examine all under
oath, both as to qualifications and to pass upon excuses, and to dis-
miss all who do not appear to have the necessary qualifications and
all who do not appear to have reasonable and proper excuses. The
bailiff in each court is to be furnished with a small box in which the
cards bearing the names of the panel of jurors are to be placed and
the jury to be called by drawing these cards one by one at random
from this box. In this way, and in this way only, can juries be
secured in accordance with the provisions of the jury system. This
jury list, thus selected, will be sufficient for about two years or more.
We submit this plan to the honorable board of county commis-
sioners, with our approval, satisfied that it is feasible and fair. The
idea of selecting at random from all the names furnished by the court
commissioners is in force in the United States courts in this district,
and gives satisfaction. All who are exempt and disqualified by
statute to be stricken from the list.
We approve the foregoing: Richard Prendergast,
Richard S. Tuthill,
John P. Altgeld,
Rollin S. Williamson,
Frank Baker.
The men who signed that call for the restoration of trial
by jury, were all of them, at the time of signing it, judges
in Chicago, and one of them is now governor of Illinois.
Judicial courtesy would not allow them to refer specifically
to Judge Gary's rulings, but it is a solemn coincidence that
every one of the wrongs they condemn in that memorial was
practised at the trial of the anarchists with the deliberate
sanction of Judge Gary. The jury was packed by the
prosecution ; it was not "impartial "; it was not "from the
body of the people"; it was not "drawn from the box";
it was not " drawn at random "; it was not drawn at all.
The charge that at the trial Judge Gary was partial, is
proved by his article in the Century Mafjazine. He is Jiot
impartial now, though the anarchists are dead. He is trying
them still. He assails with undignified invective their
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550 THE ABENA.
names, character, and qualities, their supposed aims, and
their doctrines, imaginary and real. If he can show such
prejudice now, with a pen in his hand, and in the quietude
of his owh study, what must have been Ids antipathy to the
prisoners at the time of their trial, when the very atmosphere
of the court house and of the city outside was charged full
with revengeful electricity, and when every ruling adverse to
the prisoners was hailed with " a roar of almost universal
approval."
That column or so of scolding at the labor demagogues
who lead the working men astray is well enough in its way,
but hardly to the point. So also it is interesting to know
that Judge Gary spent the summer of 1840 working at a
carpenter's bench and singing songs, but that also is outside
the argument, for the questions at issue are these, Were the
so-called anarchists guilty of the murder? and Did they get
a fair trial, according to the law of the land ?
Judge G*try assumes the affirmative of both propositions,
but confines himself chiefly to Spies and Parsons, because,
says Judge Gary, " To show how each was guilty would
require more space than could be given to a magazine
article." Before he came to that apology Judge Gary had
already exhausted thirteen columns of the magazine in
pictorial and sensational description of scenes and incidents;
therefore his excuse cannot be accepted. He confines him-
self to Spies and Parsons because these were the publishers
of the Arbeiter Zeitung and the Alarm, and this bit of good
luck enables Judge Gary to evade his own proposition " to
demonstrate to all fair-minded, intelligent people, that the
anarchists were guilty of murder." Instead of doing that
he actually pads his article with more than twenty columns
of selected extracts from the Arbeiter Zeitung and the Alarm,
although he gives no proof whatever that any of the defend-
ants except Spies and Parsons ever saw a word of them.
That course of action was prudent if not brave, because
thereby Judge Gary approaches the reader on the sentimental
side. He appeals to passion, for it is not easy to read with
patience the lurid rant and sulphurous threatenings of the
Alarm and the Arbeiter. They were the delirious ravings
of agitators intoxicated by enthusiasm for a new order of
society, and there was no connection whatever between them
and the bomb throwing in the Haymarket.
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JUDGE GABY AND THE ANARCHISTS. 651
The murder of Abraham Lincoln aroused the revengeful
feelings of the people, but nobody ever thought of hanging
the editors who for years had been invoking u the dagger of
Brutus," and advising the assassination of the president.
It is true that Governor Wise pretended that Horace Greeley
was criminally liable and guilty of murder because his
editorial writings in the New York Tribune had caused the
John Brown raid; but the claim was not seriously pressed,
although there was talk at the time about an extradition
process by which Mr. Greeley was to be surrendered and
given over to Virginia for trial. The selections from the
Alarm and the Arbeiter serve Judge Gary's purposes; they
excite sympathy for the Gary side, and they inflame the
reader's prejudice against the anarchists.
The narrative part of the article is not to be relied on,
because it is the prosecutor's version of what occurred, and
the side of the anarchists is carefully suppressed. Much of
the story is yet in controversy, and some of it has been con-
vincingly disproved. Here is a specimen of the careless
manner in which Judge Gary testifies. Speaking of the
memorable Haymarket meeting, he says, " The language of
the speakers was of a very violent character"; but the mayor
of the city, who was present at the meeting until very near
its close, and who heard all the speakers, says that the
speeches were not violent, and that he went to the police
inspector and told him to dismiss his men, because it was a
quiet meeting, and there was no necessity for the police.
The truth is the police were bent on making a riot, and as
soon as the mayor went away they marched up to the meet-
ing. After the catastrophe it became necessary to excuse
their illegal action, and so they invented a story to the effect
that although the meeting was quiet and orderly while the
mayor was present, yet that as soon as he went away, the
speech of Fielden became violent and inflammatory, making
it the duty of the police to disperse the crowd. This was an
after-thought; nobody believes it now, and Judge Gary him-
self could not have believed it when he wrote that letter to
the governor.
The partial character of Judge Gary's testimony further
appears in his manner of summing up the case against Neebe.
Having promised to show that the accused anarchists were
guilty of murder, he convicts Neebe in the following easy
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552 THE ARENA.
way: "Neebe was a stockholder in the Arbeiter, and took
charge of the property on May 5, 1886, after Spies and
Schwab were arrested. He distributed some of the 'Re-
venge' circulars. All of the defendants were members of
groups of the Internationals." That is all; and yet limp
and rickety as it is, the hidden truth of it makes it weaker
still, for Judge Gary knows very well that Neebe was no
more a u stockholder " in the Arbeiter than was any other
member of the Socialistic Publishing Company. He had five
dollars' worth of interest in it, and yet this paltry contribu-
tion enables Judge Gary to pamper Mr. Neebe into the
important rank of a " stockholder." And this is a fair speci-
men of the manner in which the prosecution inflated all the
testimony given at the trial.
The rest of Judge Gary's testimony against Neebe is dis-
torted in the same way; for instance, "He took charge of the
property,'' as if Neebe had an owner's authority at the office
of the Arbeiter, when the truth was that Neebe was merely
there as an inquirer after news along with a crowd of others,
and when a policeman said, "Who's in charge here?" Neebe
answered, " Well, I suppose I am, in the absence of Spies
and Schwab," meaning that he would see that the property
should not be stolen or destroyed.
All the testimony brought against Neebe would not justify
his imprisonment for one day, and had the bomb broken a
window merely, instead of killing a man, and had Neebe
been sued for damages on account of the broken window,
Judge Gary would have held that Neebe's connection with
the bomb throwing was too uncertain and remote to make
him liable in damages to the value of a pane of glass; yet on
that flimsy testimony the jury found Neebe guilty of murder,
and that irrational and revengeful verdict Judge Gary
solemnly sustained. Of what value, then, are his opinions as
to the guilt of the others, or as to anything connected with
the anarchists and their trial ?
Even less testimony than was produced against Neebe
would have been sufficient for Judge Gary. Neebe belonged
to the Internationals, and that was enough to make him
guilty of the murder of Matthias Degan. That reactionary
doctrine carries us backward several hundred years. It is
too imperialistic now even for the old monarchies. It would
be held barbarous to-day in Russia, Austria, Italy, or Spain ;
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JUDGE GABY AND THE ANARCHISTS. 653
and yet Judge Gary has the temerity to say, "The mere
fact that the defendants were members of the Internationals,
more or less active in the organization, even though their
action was confined to meetings of the groups, made them
co-conspirators with the more active members who worked
publicly." This grotesque and sanguinary jurisprudence
may be good enough for anarchists, but it is not law.
With amazing hardihood Judge Gary, in defiance of the
record, says, " The anarchists were not tried for being anar-
chists, but for procuring murder to be done, and being there-
fore themselves guilty of murder." Surely he remembers
the frenzy of the time and the roar of a mad people demand-
ing that the prisoners be hanged for anarchy. He himself
says that the verdict was received with " a roar of almost
universal approval." Murder was the technical crime
charged, but the case put before the jury was " Anarchy."
The press, drunk with passion, would not agree to anything
else, and so thoroughly was the public mind saturated with
that view of it, that the Chicago Tribune, in its New Year's
day edition for 1888, recording the executions for 1887, the
names of the condemned in one column, and their crimes,
murder, arson, rape, or whatever it was, in another; when it
came to November 11, mentioning Spies, Engel, Fischer,
and Parsons, the Tribune was very careful to say that they
were hanged for "Anarchy." Thousands of men in Chicago
believe it to this day.
Surely Judge Gary has not forgotten the closing speech of
the prosecuting attorney, the false issue presented by him
to the jury, and his theatrical exclamation, " Anarchy is on
trial ! " Conscious that the charge of murder had altogether
failed, he changed the issue to " anarchy " and " treason,"
the penalty for which, he said, was death. In vain the
counsel for the defendants appealed against this wrong;
Judge Gary allowed the prosecutor to go on; and to this
day, no doubt, some of the jury believe that the accused
persons were on trial for anarchy and treason, under a
nominal indictm'ent for murder.
So glaring was this ao the time that Fielden, when asked
if he had anything to say why sentence of death should not
be pronounced against him, rebuked the prosecuting attorney
and Judge Gary for substituting a false issue at the eleventh
hour* Referring to his indictment for murder he said: —
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554 THE AKENA.
I answered that charge in this court. My attorneys in my behalf
met that charge; we brought evidence to meet and rebut the charge
of murder. After all our evidence was put in, after all the speeches
had been made on both sides, with the exception of one (the closing
speech of the state's attorney), we were suddenly confronted with the
fact that the charge of murder had not been proven. When all the
witnesses had been heard I am suddenly told that I am being tried
for " anarchy." If I had known that I was being tried for anarchy,
I could have answered that charge.
And so painfully impressed by this view of it were many
members of the bar in Chicago that they openly expressed
their disapprobation. I will merely quote the opinion of
Lyman Trumbull, a very conservative man. Many years
ago he was a judge of the Supreme Court of Illinois; for
eighteen years he was a member of the United States Senate,
and chairman of the judiciary committee of that body, a man
in active practice now, and easily first among the lawyers of
Illinois. Judge Trumbull said: —
I am not altogether satisfied with the manner in which the trial of
the anarchists was conducted. It took place at a time of great public
excitement, when it was about impossible that tliey could have a fair
and impartial trial. A terrible crime had been committed which was
attributed to the anarchists, and in some respects the trial had the
appearance of a tHal of an organization known as anarchists, rather
than of persons indicted for the murder of Degan. Several of the
condemned were not at the meeting where the bomb was thrown,
and none of them, as I understand, was directly connected with the
throwing.
That is enough, but if anything more is needed, Judge
Gary's article will supply it. If this was a trial for murder,
why does he take so much pains to show the sanguinary
character of anarchy? Why does he labor to controvert the
real and imaginary doctrines of the accused men? Why
does he devote nine tenths of his article to abstract anarchy,
and only about one tenth of it to that promised evidence of
murder? The truth is that he tried Spies and the rest of
them for anarchy in 1886, and he is trying them for anarchy
now.
The abstract law of conspiracy quoted by Judge Gary
from the statutes and the text-books is trite enough, but it
has no application to the facts in the anarchist case, and
when Judge Gary, an old carpenter, makes a specific and
definite attempt to dovetail them together, he falls into laby-
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JUDGE GAKY AND THE ANARCHISTS. 555
rinthine mental confusion, as in the attempt to fit the case of
Brennan vs. The People (15 Illinois Reports, 511) to the case
of the anarchists. In the Brennan case the court said: —
There is a fatal objection to the eighteenth, twenty-first, and
twenty-second instructions asked by the prisoners. These instruc-
tions require the jury to acquit the prisoners, unless they actually
participated in the killing of Story, or unless the killing happened in
pursuance of a common design to take his life. Such is not the law.
The prisoners may be guilty of murder, although they neither took
part in the killing, nor assented to any arrangement having for its
object the death of Story. It is sufficient that they combined with
those committing the deed to do an unlawful act, and if death hap-
pens in the prosecution of the common object, all are alike guilty of
the homicide. The act of one of them done in furtherance of the
original design is, in consideration of law, the act of all, and he who
advises or encourages another to do an illegal act is responsible for
all the natural and probable consequences that may arise from its
perpetration.
Very well, but suppose that Brennan and his party,
having combined to beat or rob Story, some unknown person
should beat or rob somebody else, would Brennan be guilty
of that? Certainly not, and yet this would be a time
parallel to the anarchist case. There was no connection
shown between the defendants and the unknown person who
threw the bomb in the Haymarket, nor between their words
and his action. Judge Gary's doctrine is not new. He bor-
rowed it from those defenders of " social order " who pro-
claimed in 1859 that Horace Greeley, Frederick Douglass,
Gerritt Smith, Wendell Phillips, and William Lloyd Garri-
son were engaged in a conspiracy to subvert the constitution
by the overthrow of slavery, and that in pursuance of that
conspiracy John Brown made a revolutionary attack on
Harper's Ferry, and that as Horace Greeley and the others
had assailed the Constitution and given general advice to
overthrow slavery, they were " co-conspirators " with Brown.
Let us take another illustration. For some time past
popular stump orators and social agitators have advised, in a
general way, the spoiling of trusts by the confiscation and
larceny of their property. Would Judge Gary hold them
guilty of larceny if some unknown person should steal coal
from the coal combine, or oil from the Standard Oil Com-
pany, or sugar from Havemeyer, or any other property
belonging to those powerful corporations? Probably not,
and yet this is the doctrine he maintained in a graver case
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556 THE ARENA.
than larceny, in a case involving the tremendous issues of
life and death.
Lord Coke said, " The Common Law is the perfection of
reason." Judge Gary does not approve the definition. He
calls it " a stilted phrase," and so he substitutes a stunted
phrase in place of it, " And the law is common sense."
This musty and mischievous old maxim has been chimney-
corner law for ages, and Judge Gary fondles it as an original
discovery of his own. He quotes it again and again, he uses
it as the motto for his article, and he bestows it upon us in a
patronizing way as if it were a fatherly benediction. The
sentiment is utterly lawless and abandoned; it is the very
anarchy of jurisprudence. The term "common sense" has
no definite meaning, and the law has never permitted the
life, liberty, and property of the citizen to depend upon it.
The phrase is often used for the commonest nonsense, and
for the display of conceited egotism. Whenever it is used
by a judge, suspicion always attaches to it as an apology for
setting aside the law, and substituting for it the u common
sense " of the judge.
In judicial proceedings the phrase is dangerous as dyna-
mite, because nobody knows what common sense is. For
ages it has been the object of statutes, charters, and consti-
tutions to protect the people against the capricious "common
sense " of the judges and the courts. Every lawyer knows
that " certainty," so far as it is possible for human wisdom to
express it, is one of the essential qualities of law. This is
necessary, in order that all men may understand it, but no
man can tell what is, or what may be, the " common sense "
of a judge. It is because the " common sense " of the judges
is not certain that the constitution and laws of Illinois com-
mand that every man accused of crime shall have a fair and
impartial trial by an unprejudiced jury of his peers, and no
judge has any right to abolish this protection and say that
his own " common sense " is better than the constitution and
the law.
Even the " common sense " of Judge Gary changes with
his moods. In 1886 his "common sense" told him that
Fielden was guilty and ought to be hanged, and in 1886 he
fully intended to hang him. Having overruled the motion
for a new trial, he proceeded to pass sentence of death upon
Fielden and the others, and said: " You are all men of
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JUDGE GAR? AND THE ANARCHISTS. 557
intelligence, and know that if the verdict stands it must be
executed. The reasons why it shall stand I have already
stated in deciding the motion for a new trial." In 1887 his
" common sense " told him that as to Fielden the verdict
ought not to stand, and that it ought not to be executed.
He appealed from his own decision to the governor of
Illinois, and pleaded for a commutation of the sentence,
partly for sentimental reasons but principally on legal
grounds. If Judge Gary believed that the governor was not
a judicial magistrate, with authority to review and reverse
the decisions of the courts in criminal cases, why did the
judge tell the governor that the verdict against Fielden was
not supported by the evidence? Every position taken by
Judge Gary in the Century Magazine is contradicted and
condemned by his own letter to Governor Oglesby.
Judge Gary quotes prophecy, and indulges a little in
prophecy himself, as Fielden did at the time Judge Gary sen-
tenced him to death. Addressing the judge, the prisoner
said, "We have been tried by a jury that has found us
guilty; you will be tried by a jury now that will find you
guilty." Before this generation passes away that prophecy
will be fulfilled. The judgment in the anarchist case will
be reversed as triumphantly as the judgment against Alice
Lisle was reversed in the next generation. And, by the
way, Judge Gary tells us in the Century Magazine that the
anarchist case is without a precedent; but this is a mistake,
for it has a glaring precedent in the case of Alice Lisle.
She had given shelter and food to one of the prominent
leaders of the Western revolt, and the " common sense " of
Judge Jeffreys led him to decide that by giving such aid
and comfort she became a "co-conspirator," and was there-
fore guilty with all the rest. He therefore condemned her
to death, a barbarous judgment that was barbarously exe-
cuted, a sentence that will give Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys
a conspicuous place on the roll of infamous judges for all
time.
Some rewards are harder to bear than punishments.
Judge Gary testifies to that. He has been praised and
rewarded because of a popular belief that he would not
allow such trifles as the constitution and the law to stand
between the people and revenge. In some agony of spirit
he says : —
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6S£ THE AKENA.
Mixed with all the approval of my own part in the conviction of
the anarchists that has come to my eyes and ears, the amount of
which is beyond my summing up, there has been an undertone like
a minor strain in music, that the anarchists deserved their fate; that
society has the right to enforce the first law of nature, self-preser-
vation; and therefore if I had a little strained the law, or admin-
istered it with great rigor against them, I was to be commended for
my courage in so doing. I protest against any such commendation,
and deny utterly that I have done anything that should subject me
to it.
When a judicial magistrate bends to power, and yields to
the irrational clamor of the mad majority inside the court
house or outside of it, and gets a " roar of almost universal
approval " for doing so, men do not glorify his action by
such a word as " courage," but they describe it in words that
mean the opposite of that. Seven years of such praise as
Judge Gary has endured is torture enough, and even a
"minor strain in music" becomes painful when played for
seven years ; therefore he does not wish to be commended
any longer because he "strained the law." He repudiates
the commendation thus: —
If, therefore, I have strained the law — gone beyond its intent
and meaning — I am not to be commended but blamed for doing so.
The end, however desirable its attainment, excuses no irregular
means in the administration of justice.
In saying " If I had a little strained the law," Judge Gary
is too modest altogether. He strained it until it broke.
For some of his harsh rulings at the trial he offers no justifi-
cation or excuse, although they have been criticised for
nearly seven years. He compelled eight men, in peril of
their lives, to be. tried in a batch together, and he denied
them the right to be separately tried. By this device each
man was weighted down with all the testimony given against
all the others, and his right of challenge was grievously im-
paired. That right is individual and personal, and a man on
trial for his life ought not to be compelled against his will
to mix his own challenges with those of other men. Where
eight men are jointly arraigned, some of them may desire to
challenge a juror whom the others wish to retain, but by
Judge Gary's rulings they were compelled to unite in their
challenges or forfeit them altogether. The law of Illinois
gives the defendant in a capital case twenty challenges, but
Judge Gary limited the eight defendants in the anarchist
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.ftTDGE GARY AND THE ANARCHISTS. &5$
case to a joint interest in a hundred and sixty challenges,
which is a privilege much inferior to the other. He also
allowed the state's attorney to multiply his twenty challenges
by eight, so that the prosecutor had one hundred and sixty
separate challenges, while the eight defendants were allowed
only the same number, and these they were compelled to use
jointly or not at all.
In the way of oblique excuse, Judge Gary pleads that
" This case is without precedent." He says, u There is no
example in the law books of a case of this sort." This is a
mistake, except in the purely physical sense that no two
men are exactly alike. Cases containing the same legal and
moral elements that were involved in the anarchist case, are
multitudinous in the books. Take, for instance, the case of
This tie wood and his gang, tried for treason in 1820. This
has a strong resemblance to the anarchist case, excepting
that, unlike the anarchists, Thistlewood and his party actu-
ally committed the deed for which they were condemned.
They organized a conspiracy to overthrow the government,
and were to begin the reign of terror by murdering all the
ministers of the crown at a cabinet dinner given by Lord
Harrowby in Grosvenor Square. On the day of the dinner,
the conspirators assembled in the loft of a neighboring stable,
and after arming themselves with knives, daggers, and
pistols, they were about to start on their sanguinary expedi-
tion when the police appeared and ordered them to surrender.
They opened fire upon the police, killing some and wound-
ing others, but in the end were overpowered. In the midst
of intense public excitement, Thistlewood and fifteen others
were jointly indicted for their crime, and being arraigned,
they said they wished to sever in their challenges, where-
upon they were granted separate trials as a matter of absolute
right. The case of Frost, Williams, and Jones, tried at
Monmouth in 1840, is a similar instance; the case of Ashton,
Elliott, and Lord Viscount Preston, tried before Lord Holt,
in the reign of William III., is another, and these can be
multiplied by hundreds. If Judge Gary meant to declare it
c * without precedent" that eight men jointly indicted for a
capital crime were denied the right to sever in their chal-
lenges and to be separately tried, he is probably correct. It
is very likely that " There is no example in the law books
of a case of this sort."
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560 THE ABENA.
" I suppose," remarks Judge Gary, " that in the Lord
George Gordon riots we may, perhaps, find something like
this ; but Lord George Gordon was indicted for treason, and
the government failed in its proofs upon the trial as to what
he had done. Very likely they did not want to prove it
very strongly against him." The comparison between the
anarchist case is unfortunate for Judge Gary, and he falls
into error in supposing that the government did not wish to
convict Gordon. He was the very man the government was
after, for his pernicious activity was troublesome. He was a
fanatical enthusiast of high rank, a member of Parliament, a
magnetic demagogue of dangerous oratorical ability, and the
inspiration of the riots. The government was anxious to
exterminate Gordon, and would have done it if the judges
had not given him a fair trial.
Also it is a mistake to say that the government failed in
its proofs of what he had done. They proved that for
months he' had been stimulating a "No Popery" rebellion
by speeches of the most fiery and violent character ; that on
the very day the riots began he had addressed an excited
multitude of sixty thousand people, protesting that there
would be "no help until all the popish chapels were des-
troyed "; that the mob then retired, and at night began the
work of burning the chapels and many private residences.
They burned the house of Lord Chief Justice Mansfield and
everything it contained, including his priceless library. For
four days they had London in a state of terror. Scores of
houses were burned, many lives were sacrificed, and much
pillage was done. There was no deficiency of proof, but the
government failed because the prosecution could not show
any legal or logical connection between the words of Gordon
and the deeds of the mob. In the language of Judge Gary,
" There was no evidence that he knew of any preparation to
do the specific acts " of treason, arson, and murder. Lord
George Gordon was acquitted because no traitorous or
malicious intent was shown, nor any intent to produce the
riots that came out of the " No Popery " agitation.
A word or two about that picture of " The Monument
to the Martyred Police " and its forged and counterfeit
epigraph. The figure is a policeman with uplifted hand, and
the command he gave, according to the motto chiselled on the
pedestal, was this, " In the name of the people of Illinois I
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JUDGE GARY AND THE ANARCHISTS. 561
command peace." Judge Gary knows that nothing of the
kind was uttered. Here is what the policeman said, " In
the name of the people of Illinois I command this meeting
to disperse." Judge Gary himself confesses that, but he
does not say why the falsification on the monument was
made. The command actually given by the police captain
was in violation of the Constitution of the United States
and the laws of Illinois, as the monument committee very
well knew, and so they changed it into a gentle appeal for
peace. And every day and every hour that bronze police-
man with uplifted hand repeats the false quotation to every
man and woman and child that passes by. There is a
parallel to it in the old monument that rears its head
a hundred and fifty feet into the air on Fish Street Hill,
and commemorates the great fire of London. For years it
bore an inscription saying that London was burned by
the Roman Catholics, a falsehood of which the city became
ashamed at last, and therefore cut it out of the stone.
Pope refers to it thus: —
Where London's column, pointing to the skies,
Like a tall bully lifts its head and lies.
The police monument gives false testimony. Carved on
the face of it is a forgery of the record, a perversion of the
truth; and so long as it stands in the Haymarket, it will
remain a brazen symbol of the trial. Ere long, all the
citizens of Chicago will point at. it with derision, and say: —
There Bonfield's column, pointing to the skies,
Like a tall bully lifts its head, and — lies.
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RICHARD ANTHONY PROCTOR, ASTRONOMER.
BY REV. HOWARD MACQUEARY.
No writer of this generation has done more to interest
people in the high science of astronomy than the man whose
name appears at the head of this article. Both by original
investigation and by numerous popular treatises on the sub-
ject, Professor Proctor strove to promote a knowledge of
astronomy. Yet his body has lain in a neglected grave in
Greenwood Cemetery, New York, since his death from
yellow fever, Sept. 12, 1888. His children have earnestly
desired to properly honor their father by removing his
remains to a lot of their own and erecting a suitable monu-
ment to his memory, but they have not been able to do so,
having to earn their own living. Recently Miss Mary
Proctor, Professor Proctor's eldest daughter, who now re-
sides in St. Joseph, Mo., and several of her father's friends
and admirers, began a movement by which they hoped to
raise the funds necessary to the purchase of a lot and monu-
ment for the aforesaid purpose. They were successful
beyond anticipation, for that well-known philanthropist and
patron of all that is high and noble, Mr. George W. Childs
of Philadelphia, when the project became known to him,
generously offered to assume the entire expense of the re-
interment of Professor Proctor's remains ; and so, at last,
this servant of science will receive the honor due him. It is
specially appropriate, therefore, to review at this time the
life and work of Richard A. Proctor.
He was bom in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London, on March
23, 1837. He was the youngest of four children, two sons
and two daughters, and was rather a delicate child. His
mother seems to have been a clever woman. She kept him
at home as long as possible, attending to his education. His
boyish contemporaries remember him as a great reader,
devouring books of a more advanced type than boys usually
care for. His father, who was a solicitor with literary tastes,
died when his little son was thirteen years old.
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RICHARD ANTHONY PROCTOR. 563
Young Proctor's health having improved, he was in due
time sent to King's College, London, and then to St. John's
College, Cambridge, where he obtained a scholarship. Dur-
ing his collegiate course he took much interest in athletic
sports, and was made captain of the Lady Somerset, a
Johnian boating club, and brought his boat up several
places on the river. During his second year at Cambridge
he lost his mother, to whom he was devotedly attached; and
shortly afterwards, while travelling with his sister, he fell in
love with a young Irish lady, and was privately married to
her while at college. He came out in the honors list of
1860 as twenty-third wrangler, a degree which greatly dis-
appointed his friends, many of whom had already recognized
his remarkable talent.
Upon leaving college he had, of course, to decide upon
some profession. Finding that he could not conscientiously
comply with his mother's wish and enter the ministry, he
thought of the law, and for a while ate dinners at the
Temple. But this also proved uncongenial to his mind, and
he finally determined to adopt a scientific career, having
been led thereto by reading Nichol's " Architecture of the
Heavens," and Mitchell's " Popular Astronomy." He lived
for short periods first in Ayr, then in Edinburgh, then near
Dublin, and afterwards at Davenport.
Mr. Proctor's first literary venture was an article on
" Double Stars," which he sent in 1865, without introduc-
tion of any kind, to the editor of the Cornhill Magazine.
To his delight it was accepted, and he was about to despatch
a letter of warm thanks to the editor when a check arrived.
Not knowing that magazines paid for such contributions, he
fancied that there must have been some mistake, but upon
inquiry he learned that this was not the case, and he devoted
the money to the purchase of telescopic adjuncts, which he
needed. Not every young writer would have been so
anxious to discover such a mistake !
His first book was on " Saturn and its System," and was
published in 1865, at his own expense; its preparation
occupied four years. It was very favorably received by
astronomers, who recognized that a writer of exceptional
ability had appeared. Geometrical conceptions were ex-
pounded with great clearness, and astronomical and histori-
cal details were explained with an ease and enthusiasm
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564 THE ARENA.
which attracted the reader. But though the book was well
received by the reviewers, the public did not buy it, and he
found, to his great disappointment, that its publication was
a source of loss instead of profit. He might have borne this
loss better had not a greater calamity befallen him at the
same time. He was a large shareholder in a New Zealand
bank which failed during the commercial panic of 1866,
entirely absorbing his capital. His family was increasing in
number, and the grave question pressed upon him whether
he should not forsake the study of astronomy and devote
himself to teaching, or seek an official appointment. He
finally determined to continue in his chosen work, and wrote
some articles on " The Telescope " for the Popular Science
Review.
" For five years," he says, " I did not take one day's holi-
day from the work I found essential for my family's main-
tenance." It frequently seemed to him that he must abandon
his scientific work. His articles were constantly sent back
to him, and he says, pathetically, " I would willingly have
turned to stone-breaking on the roads, or any other form of
hard and honest but unscientific labor, if a modest compe-
tence in any such direction had been offered me."
Even Anthony Trollope wrote to him, on receiving an
article on "The Gulf Stream," that it seemed interesting,
but he must ask for some evidence to show that the author
was competent to deal with a subject of the kind in a scien-
tific way — as if such evidence must not be found in the
article itself, if anywhere ! Fortunately Mr. Proctor was
able to satisfy him, and the article appeared in due time in
the St. PauVs Magazine.
The publishers were equally shy of his books, and both
the Longmans and the Macmillans refused to accept his
" Handbook of the Stars " ; so with the help of a friend, five
hundred copies were printed, which sold and paid expenses.
With similar help he brought out his "Constellation
Seasons " and his " Sun Views of the Earth," both of which
paid expenses and a few pounds over, but no new editions
were prepared. At last Messrs. Hardwick engaged him to
write a small book called u Half Hours with the Telescope,"
for twenty-five pounds.
During this time he advertised for pupils in mathematics,
and secured the position of mathematical teacher in a military
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RICHARD ANTHONY PROCTOR. 565
academy at Woolwich and Sandhurst, but the work was very-
distasteful to him. Slowly he obtained a footing with lead-
ing magazines, and after the publication of his popular work
on " Other Worlds than Ours," in 1870, his ability was fully
recognized and he was asked to write other books. He was
elected Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society on June 8,
1866, and one of its honorary secretaries in 1872. He held
this post until November, 1873, when he retired in order to
come to America on a lecturing tour.
He was warmly received in this country, and soon made
for himself a national reputation as a pleasing and forcible
lecturer. When his first wife died, in 1879, leaving six
children, he married an American lady, settling for a time in
St. Joseph, Mo., and finally in Florida. There it was that
he contracted the yellow fever, which carried him off in
T.888. His last wife has married within the past year, and
now resides in Belfast, Ireland. Two of his daughters,
Misses Mary and Agnes, live in St. Joseph; his eldest son,
John M. Proctor, is a resident of Portland, Ore. ; Richard
T. Proctor makes his home in Denver, Col., and Henry
Proctor is living in Brighton, England. Thus the Proctor
family is largely identified with this country, and it is only
proper that the father's remains should permanently rest
among us and be honored by us.
Professor Proctor was the author of fifty-seven volumes on
astronomy, the most popular of which is perhaps " Other
WorlcU than Ours." His last work, however, is his most
important and complete production. It is entitled "Old
and New Astronomy," and has been finished and published
since his death by his friend, Mr. Arthur C. Ranyard of
England, to whose sketch of Mr. Proctor's life and work, in
the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, I
am largely indebted for the data used in this article.
One of Mr. Proctor's favorite theories was the inhabit-
ability of " other worlds than ours," and those who have
read his arguments on the subject must feel that all the
probabilities of the case point to his conclusion. Of course
absolute demonstration cannot reasonably be required, but
when it is shown that the same conditions of life prevail on
other planets that exist here, we can hardly refuse to believe
that life must also exist there, and Mr. Proctor gives strong
reasons and many facts to show that such conditions do
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566 THE ARENA.
exist in Mars and other planets as are necessary to life,
animal and human.
But more important than such speculations are his original
discoveries respecting Venus and Mars. In a series of
papers communicated to the Royal Astronomical Society, he
examined into the conditions of observation for the transits
of 1874 and 1882 with great thoroughness and at much
detail, and his opinions may be read in " Old and New
Astronomy" (pp. 251-72).
Amongst other matters with which Mr. Proctor's name
will always be associated in astronomy may be mentioned
his accurate determination of the rotation period of Mars.
One of Mr. Proctor's greatest undertakings was the
charting of the three hundred and twenty-four thousand
stars contained in Argelander's Catalogue, showing the
relation of stars down to the eleventh . magnitude, with the
Milky Way and its subsidiary branches. In a series of
papers on "Star Distribution," "The Construction of the
Milky Way," " The Distribution of Nebulae and Star Clus-
ters," and on " The Proper Motions of the Stare," etc., he
completely disposed of the artificial theories which had been
previously held regarding the stellar universe.
Amid all this scientific activity Mr. Proctor found time
for the lighter accomplishments. He was passionately fond
of music, and played the piano with much delicacy of touch
and feeling. He was an authority on whist, and was the
author of a book on the subject; and he was at one time
president of the British Chess Society in London.
" It may certainly be said of Mr. Proctor," says Mr. Ran-
yard, " that he has succeeded in interesting a larger public
in the science of astronomy than any other man. His books
have been read and his lectures listened to not only in Eng-
land and America, but in most of the English colonies ; and
the wide interest he has stirred up in astronomical subjects
will no doubt have far-reaching results, and bear important
fruit."
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SILVER OR FIAT MONET, WHICH SHALL
IT BE?
BY A. J. WARNER.
Unless the use of silver as money is to be left to
automatic regulation through the production of the mines
and unrestricted coinage, it might as well be abandoned for
monetary purposes, and sooner or later will be. Unless this
metal is to remain as a fountain of supply for money,
endowed with all the functions required for a standard of
value and for coin of ultimate payment for debts and obliga-
tions of every description, it cannot long hold its place as a
money metal. As secondary money, the value of which is
to be maintained by legislative limitations or by promise of
redemption in gold, silver is no better than greenbacks.
In fact, as Cernuschi has said, such coins are but silver
greenbacks, and it is altogether needless to resort to a
material as costly to produce as silver for that kind of
money. The writer feels justified, therefore, in saying that
he believes economists generally agree that unless silver is
to stand as a money metal, possessing the same monetary
rights as gold, its use as money, except, perhaps, for sub-
sidiary coins, will be abandoned in the near future.
The question first in importance, then, is, What shall take
the place of silver as money, or whence is the supply of
money to come, to carry on the increasing business of the
world? The answer cannot be Gold, for the gold of the
world is already hardly able to do the work now imposed
upon it, and under this strain is constantly growing scarcer
and dearer. As a money standard it has already in-
creased from fifty to sixty per cent in twenty years. In
the presence of the world's vast debts such an increase
becomes alarming, and, instead of being a standard of
equity, has already led to world-wide and unpardonable
injustice. Surely Christian nations cannot much longer
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568 THE ARENA.
tolerate this method of confiscation. Moreover, the produc-
tion of gold is on the decline; and if silver mines are
closed, the production must necessarily fall off still more
rapidly. All competent geologists agree that there is no
probability of any material increase in the supply of gold,
even for brief periods, and that for the long future the
supply must grow less. On the other hand, the consumption
of gold in dentistry and for industrial uses is gradually
increasing; and if the stage has not already been reached
when the world's stock of money is being drawn upon for
the arts, the time is near at hand when the stock of gold
money will begin to disappear in this way. Nor can the
loss of gold in other ways be left out of our calculations.
The researches of Jacobs led him to the conclusion that gold
coin in circulation wore out, on the average, in two hundred
and sixty-four years.
But enough has been said to show that the annual supply
of gold is likely to be insufficient even to meet the present
demands upon it, and altogether unable to fill the place
now filled, under various conditions, by silver. This being
the situation as to the supply of metallic money, the possi-
bility of making gold take the place of the present stock of
full legal-tender silver money, even in countries where silver
has been in whole or in part demonetized, is quite out of the
question.
But another point of vital importance arises here. Can
we have automatic regulation of money, or of the money
standard, with gold alone as that standard? From before
historic times, and certainly for thirty-five centuries, gold
and silver have been in use as money, with no limitation
on them; and their value, as compared with other things,
in all ages has been determined by the quantity furnished
by the mines, and, consequently, by the same laws that
regulated the value of everything else. During all this
period, through Babylonian, Assyrian, Egyptian, Grecian,
and Roman civilizations, down to 1873, according to the
high authority of Max Miiller, the ratio of the two metals
did not vary more than from 13 to 1, to 15$ to 1. The
relative production of the two metals, however, has varied
widely during this time, and often over long periods of time.
But this variation in production did not affect the relative
value of the two metals.
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SILVER OR FIAT MONEY. 569
From this fact has been deduced the compensatory law of
bimetallism, which is that with the unrestricted use of the
two metals as money, or under free mintage, if, through
increased production or otherwise, one metal for the time
being becomes more abundant or more accessible than the
other, and tends in consequence to become cheaper, then,
under the law of legal tender, whether established by custom
or by legislative action, the more abundant metal is taken
up and its use extended, while that of the other is cor-
respondingly diminished, and in this way parity is main-
tained. Of course, without the power of legal tender,
bimetallism could not exist. Nor can it if the option is
given to the payee. Hence, when the secretary of the
Treasury assumes that, in order to maintain the parity of
gold and silver under the Act of 1890, he must give the
option to the payee to take which metal he prefers, he is
adopting a policy which, if persisted in, must necessarily
result ultimately in the use of but one of them. If the
metals were at a parity to begin with, such a policy would
certainly produce disparity. Bimetallism could not be
permanently maintained even if we had, to begin with, a
general concurrence of nations on a common ratio. It
necessarily rests upon the law of legal tender which gives
the option to the payor.
But our question is, Can we have automatic regulation
with gold alone ? In other words, Is it possible, with gold
as the only money of ultimate redemption, to have such an
adjustment of supply to increasing population and wealth as
to secure anything like stability of prices — or, which is the
same thing, stable relations between money and population
and business ?
With no new gold for money, instead of an adjustment of
money supply to increasing population and business, prices
must undergo frequent readjustment to the relatively re-
duced quantity of standard money. Hence it is within the
bounds of proper economic deduction to say that with gold
alone, automatic adjustment of money supply to needs of
money, or automatic regulation of the money standard, is
impossible. Consequently, to give up silver involves the
overthrow of the vital principle of automatic regulation
of money.
The importance of this principle cannot be magnified when
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570 THE ARENA.
viewed in connection with the vast load of debts under which
the world is now laboring. How the equities of contracts
extending far into the future are otherwise to be preserved,
is not easily seen. On the other hand, fear is expressed, on
the part of those holding long-time obligations, lest the pro-
duction of silver may so increase as to cheapen money till
it will become of comparatively little valu'e ; but a little
reflection will dispel this fear.
Under regulation of money supply through the production
of the mines, the limit of variation is always the relative
cost of mining the metal and the cost of producing other
things. If in the course of years the annual production of
either metal, or of both, should so add to the money stocks
of the world as to materially cheapen money and raise
prices (and it is only by raising prices that money is shown
to be cheaper), the point would be soon reached when it
would be easier and take less labor to get a dollar by produc-
ing commodities than by digging it from the mines. The
supply of money would therefore be checked, and the
tendency to constancy in the relative supply of money and
commodities would be restored.
The importance of this principle in the regulation of
money supply cannot be overestimated, and gold mono-
metallists do not know what they do when they destroy this
principle, which is absolutely ruined when bimetallism is
overthrown. The opinion, however, prevails widely, even
among the banking and mercantile classes, that metallic
money is no longer of importance, and that a paper currency,
left to banks to issue freely, may be made to expand and
contract in response to the wants of trade. They seem to
have the idea that the demand for money is controlled by
the same conditions that control the demand for anything
else ; that only so much would be taken up, no matter how
much was issued. They forget that the first effect of an
inflation of money is to raise prices, and that as prices rise
the need for money is increased. As prices get higher
more money is required to perform the same number of
exchanges. Twice as much money would be needed to
pay for horses at two hundred dollars apiece as would be
if horses were worth but one hundred dollars each. Money,
therefore, is never given back as a thing that can be no
longer used. Mr. Weguelin, president of the Bank of Eng-
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SILVER OR FIAT MONEY. 571
land, in answer to the question put to him by the Parlia-
mentary Commission of 1857, as to how much money there
was a demand for in England, said there was no limit. It
may therefore be laid down as an admitted principle that
there is no such relation between the demand for money and
the ability to issue it, as admits of automatic regulation.
But a much larger class, including not a few writers on
the subject, while they may question the soundness of the
principle of automatic adjustment of money supply to the
demand for money when everybody with credit enough to
put out notes is left free to issue notes to circulate as cur-
rency, nevertheless maintain that if the notes are made re-
deemable and properly secured, there can be no excess of
issue, and that the adjustment of money supply to needs for
money will be perfect. Even a cursory examination of this
claim will show that it is no more tenable and scarcely less
dangerous than that just exposed.
In the first place, there is absolutely no difference in the
fundamental principle between basing the issue of notes on
land and on the public funds. Of the two, however, the
latter is the more vicious, because there is a better defined
limit to land than there can be to debt. The issue of notes
on land is lawism, pure and simple ; so is that of notes on
bonds. The only difference is in the kind of security.
Macleod, in his " Theory and Practice of Banking," says : —
The principles of basing a paper currency upon land and upon
the public funds are absolutely identical and equally vicious. To
permit a man to spend his money in buying part of the public debt,
and to have it, as well, in the form of notes, is as rank an absurdity
as to permit him to spend it in land and also have it as notes.
Worse, if possible, is the theory of basing a currency
upon the discount of commercial bills, as sometimes proposed
by bankers.
The answer may be set up that the notes are to be
redeemable in gold, or in legal-tender paper, which in turn
the government will redeem in gold, and if redeemable in
gold that they cannot fall below gold. But the doctrine
was laid down by one of our earlier secretaries that the
promise of redemption was not such regulation of quantity
as would secure stability of value in the currency. This
principle is now as generally admitted as any doctrine of
economics. It has also been abundantly shown that promise
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572 THE ARENA.
of redemption, with ample security of final redemption, has
not prevented, and will not prevent, the depreciation, at
times, of such a currency. There could be no doubt as to
the ability of the United States ultimately to redeem a
billion dollars of greenbacks, but that would not prevent
the depreciation of such a volume of currency if it should be
at once issued. If a thousand millions of government bonds,
bearing four per cent interest, could at this time be had at par,
they would be seized upon by the banks as security for notes,
and wild inflation would follow. The only principle that
would govern the issue of such a currency would be the
interest of the banks. This is proven by the issue of
national bank notes in 1865-66, in addition to an already
inflated paper currency.
The first effect of such an increase of the currency would
be to depreciate the whole volume of money, which would
be indicated by a rise of prices, followed by the export of
gold. If a safe proportion were 5 of paper to 1 of gold, then
in order to preserve the same proportion, if $100,000,000 of
gold were exported, $500,000,000 of the paper must be sud-
denly extinguished. But such a contraction would precipi-
tate panic, and spread ruin broadcast. A large part of
existing financial troubles arise from just such a condition.
Of course with both gold and silver as a basis for credit, a
much larger structure could be safely erected upon the
broader foundation of the two metals.
But the point I have aimed to bring out is that converti-
bility, with ample security behind the notes, is not such reg-
ulation of quantity as will secure stability in the value of
the currency ; but that, on the contrary, a currency regulated
by no other principle is certain to undergo wide fluctuations,
and periodically to lose convertibility, with all the disas-
trous consequences of the sudden breaking down of a credit
currency.
That such a currency will operate to expel gold as effec-
tively as any other form of currency, is very likely.
Webster said, in his sub-treasury speech, "There is a
liability to excessive issues of paper, even while paper is
convertible at will; of this there can be no doubt." And
again, " The circulation of paper tends to displace coin ; it
may banish it altogether; at this very moment it has ban-
ished it."
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SILVER OR FIAT MONEY. 573
Lord Overstone laid down the principle that "Nothing
will secure the permanent convertibility of paper money but
a constant regulation of the amount of that paper money in
conformity with the variations in the amount of the bullion."
Indeed, the doctrine may be said to be well established
that neither convertibility nor security of ultimate redemp-
tion can be relied upon to insure stability in the value of a
paper currency. Nothing but the due regulation of quantity
will preserve the parity of a paper circulation with the coin
in which it is redeemable. In view of these principles, so
well established, and which every enlightened nation has
accepted and acted upon in regulating the issue of currency,
it is almost unaccountable that the United States should be
threatened with further experience with a kind of currency
that wrecked so many fortunes and spread such devastation
in 1837, and at other periods of sudden collapse after wild
inflation of " convertible " bank notes. No one acquainted
with the discussion of this subject in England, before and
following the passage of Peel's Act of 1844, would favor a
return to such a currency. That Congressman Harter should
propose the issue, by thousands of banks, of all the currency
for which they could put up bonds of any sort, provided only
that they promised to redeem in gold, need not, perhaps,
surprise any one ; but that a writer of the standing of Mr.
Horace White should seriously propose, first, to reduce the
money of redemption to gold alone, and then to provide for
the issue of paper promises to pay gold, limited only by the
bonds that can be procured as a basis for such an issue, can
hardly be rationally accounted for.
We have already shown that the issue of a currency based
on debt is the worst form of lawism; and when it is seriously
proposed to substitute such a currency for one of the precious
metals, and to resort to regulation by the quantity of evi-
dences of debt that may exist, instead of the automatic regu-
lation of the mines, silver men may well ask, Where are we
drifting?
Although a return to such a form of currency may be
discussed and may get into a party platform, we are not
prepared to believe that it will ever again be actually
resorted to. What would be the volume of a currency of
that kind that could be kept convertible into gold in this
country, with silver demonetized ?
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574 THE AKENA.
Surely, there must be some proportion between the cur-
rency to be redeemed and the coin provided for its redemp-
tion. If it be 5 to 1, the limit of such a volume would be
much below the present volume. The banks, all told, now
hold less than $200,000,000 of gold. The Treasury contains
of its own less than $100,000,000. There is no evidence that
there is $100,000,000 in circulation, or in the hands of the
people. The mint estimates of gold for years have been
excessive. If there were $25,000,000 in actual circulation
east of the Missouri River, it would be made evident ; but
there is no evidence that any such quantity is held in actual
circulation. It is hard to believe, either, that $50,000,000
of gold is hoarded in this country. Great Britain has less
than $400,000,000 of gold in the kingdom, although it has a
gold currency, and no notes are used in England for less
than £5, and none in the kingdom for less than £1, or $5;
nor is it believed that more than $400,000,000 of gold is left
in the United States, after the excess of exports since 1888.
With less than $200,000,000 of gold in the banks, and $200,-
000,000 in the country, and paper all redeemable in gold,
what a prospect for a country like ours! Would such a
system stand? Surely not long. Let no one be deluded
with the notion that the basis of our money can be reduced
to gold alone, and at the same time the volume of currency
be increased, or even be maintained long at its present
limits.
The issue here is between a broader basis of primary
money and a relatively smaller volume of credit currency
based upon it, and a narrower basis with a larger super-
structure of credit. Which is the safer? which is best? It
is no answer to say that ninety-five per cent of the business
of the country is done with credit devices. In the first
place, that is not true, as can be demonstrated. In the next
place, whatever the proportion may be, the utmost limit of
this sort of credit has been attained in our enormously ex-
tended system of bank credits; and the larger this structure
is, the greater the collapse when the drain of gold comes.
The idea, or want of idea, that some have, that it does not
matter whether there is much or little gold, if there is only
confidence, is well exhibited in the definition of standard of
value quoted by Sir Robert Peel in his speech of May 6,
1844, as a sample of ideas then afloat, "The standard is
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SILVER OR FIAT MONEY. 575
neither gold nor silver, but it is something set up in the
imagination, to be regulated by public opinion."
No, this country will not accept a precarious gold basis
without a gold currency, and with no supply of gold to meet
the demands of increasing population and wealth; nor a cur-
rency based upon it, issued and controlled by private bank-
ing institutions, whether secured or not by bonds or other
evidences of debt. The principle is unsound ; it is vicious
all through, and will only bring trouble. If silver is aban-
doned and the automatic regulation of standard money through
the production of the mines is given up, the demand will be
for the issue of money by the government, regulated in
amount by some definite proportion between the volume of
money, on the one hand, and population and wealth on the
other, with provision for an annual increment that will main-
tain the proportion between the money volume and popula-
tion and wealth as nearly constant as possible. And this
would be more rational and far safer than any scheme
founded on a gold basis with a credit currency issued by
innumerable banks. This would be a substitution of legis-
lative regulation for automatic regulation through the pro-
duction of the mines. It would be the substitution of the
44 vagaries of legislation " for " the uncertainties of the
mines."
The contest is really between these two principles; for it
is impossible that the gold basis alone, with private issues of
currency, can ever gain a firm footing in this country. There
is too much intelligence abroad in the United States to per-
mit the adoption of a system that has been discarded by
every nation of Europe.
Which, then, shall it be — gold and silver automatically
regulated by the production of the mines, with free coinage
of both metals as it had been for indefinite ages before 1873,
supplemented by Treasury notes under such limitations and
regulations as will secure at all times the ready converti-
bility of the paper into the metals; or paper money issued by
the government, under such regulations as Congress from
time to time may impose ?
In other words, shall it be silver with automatic regu-
lation through production, or fiat money under legislative
regulation?
This question, it is believed, is freighted with conse-
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576 THE ARENA.
quences of greater moment to the people of this country
and of the world than apy other now under discussion. For
if bimetallism is destroyed, the automatic regulation of
money will go with it, and the entire volume of silver money
now in the world must be withdrawn, for it will soon cease
to be worth more than a small percentage of its normal
value. What this involves can be better imagined than
described. Moreton Frewen is doubtless right when he says
such a contraction "would leave not a bank or mortgage
company standing in the entire western hemisphere." Hence,
if metallic money falls with the failure of automatic regula-
tion, gold must go also.
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AIONIAN PUNISHMENT NOT ETEMAL.
BY W. B. MANLEY, D. D.
This heading will be understood by all who know that
the original of eternal in the expression "eternal punish-
ment," is the Greek word aionios (douvios). I propose to
analyze the word, and show the usage of all its forms,* (1)
in the Old Testament, f 2) in the New Testament, (3) in
classic Greek authors, (4) in Jewish writings, and finally,
(5) in the early Christian fathers.
Aionios comes from aion; and this last is generally re-
garded as composed of two smaller words, aei (<Ut) always,
and 6n (&v) being. Then aion is found in a number of differ-
ent forms, all of which will be exhibited and commented on;
after which I will name several words that are found in the
New Testament, having the meaning of eternal or endless,
but never employed in the Bible to express the duration of
punishment.
I. The Old Testament. On this part of the Bible I need
not employ much time, for the reason that the Hebrew words
(and there are several such) which have a meaning similar
to that of aion or aionios, have these last as renderings in the
Greek version of the Old Testament, and these must be pre-
sumed to have the same meaning there as they have in the
New Testament; and what this is will be fully shown in this
article. But in doing this, I shall not deny myself the privi-
lege of making references to that part of the Scriptures,
when necessary for proof or illustration.
II. The New Testament. The only part of aion that has
any duration in it, expressed or implied, is the little adverb
aei. It occurs eight times in the New Testament, and is
translated always, both in the old and new versions, in every
instance but one. I will quote enough of each passage to
give the sense.
The multitude began to ask Pilate to do as he had ever
done to them (Mark xv. 8). The revisers have it, " as he
was wont to do." " As he had always done," would havv)
677
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578 THE ARENA.
made all the renderings uniform. Ye do always resist the
Holy Spirit (Acts vii. 51). We . . . are always delivered
unto death (2 Cor. iv. 11). Always rejoicing (2 Cor. vi.
10). Cretans are always liars (Titus i. 12). They do
always err (Heb. iii. 10). Being ready always to give an
answer (1 Pet. iii. 15). I shall be ready always to put you
in remembrance (2 Pet. i. 12).
The word is used precisely as we use always^ not so much
to denote duration as constancy. The first passage shows
the meaning of all the rest. Pilate had been governor of
Judea about five years. But this had nothing to do with the
demand of the multitude. They asked him to do as he had
constantly done before. The use of the present tense, in all
but the first passage, is confirmation of this view. The word
denotes continuity of action, and not perpetuity — what is
being done, and not what will be done. Punishment that
has no more duration than what is contained in this word is
not objectionable. The wicked are always punished.
But it is said that when aei and on are united, the mean-
ing is "always being," and that is eternal. Not exactly.
There is a great difference between always being, and always
continuing to be. The latter idea is not in the words.
Besides, this aion, " always being," is said to have an end.
There are five instances of this kind in the New Testament.
These will come before us in due time. I will now give
the different forms in which this word is presented.
1. It is used of past time, and is generally rendered world.
Since the world began (Luke i. 70, John ix. 32, Acts iii. 21).
From the beginning of the world (Acts xv. 18, Eph. iii. 9).
Before the world (1 Cor. ii. 7). From ages (Col. i. 26).
One cannot help seeing that here a limited period is intended.
If the past denoted by this term is limited, the future must
be. Besides, some of these are in the plural; the last is of
this kind. There can be but one unlimited period — two
eternities is a contradiction in terms.
2. Aion is rendered world, and is found in the expression
u this world," which implies " that world," thus constituting
two unlimited periods. As this cannot be, aion cannot
denote an unlimited period. (See Matt. xiii. 22, Mark iv.
19, Luke xvi. 8, Rom. xii. 2, 1 Cor. i. 20, ii. 6, iii. 18, 2 Cor.
iv. 4, Gal. i. 4, Eph. vi. 12, 1 Tim. vi. 17, 2 Tim. iv. 10, Tit.
ii. 12.) I would add that world is not a correct translation,
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AIONIAN PUNISHMENT. 579
though our argument is not affected by this circumstance.
Both world and age are equally limited terms.
3. Axon is found in the expression " world to come "
(Mark x. 30, Luke xviii. 30, Heb. vi. 5). Ages to come
(Eph. ii. 7). " This world and that which is to come," is
found in Matt. xii. 32, Eph. i. 20. It requires no remark
to show that here aion cannot denote an unlimited period.
It should be added, however, to prevent misunderstanding,
that the world or age to come is not the future state of
existence, but, as Dr. Clarke and others contend, the age of
the Messiah, about to succeed the Jewish dispensation.
Such was the usage of Jewish writers in the time of Christ.
But the principal passages make this plain by the use of an
important word, omitted in the version.
For some reason, " best known to themselves," the transla-
tors and revisers have left out an important word, found in
Matt. xii. 32, Eph. i. 20, and Heb. vi. 5, which, if used,
would make " the world to come," to be " the world about
to come," or near at hand. This could not be said of the
immortal world, for, in one sense, that world has existed
from the beginning, and, in another sense, it has not yet
come, and will not, while this world stands. But the king-
dom of God, or Christian dispensation, was about to come,
and the Jewish economy was soon to terminate, to make
room for it. Though Jesus was on earth, he represents his
mission as future, though at hand and about to come. He
was preparing for it.
On Matt. xii. 32, which says, " The sin against the Holy
Spirit shall not be forgiven, neither in this world, nor in
that which is [about] to come," Dr. Adam Clarke has the
following: "I am fully satisfied that the meaning of the
words is, neither in tins dispensation, namely, the Jewish,
nor in that which is to come, namely, the Christian. Olam
habo, the world to come, is a constant phrase for the times of
the Messiah, in Jewish writers." Bishop Pierce, Wakefield,
and many others hold the same opinions.
4. In the following passages, the end of the world (aim)
is mentioned, meaning the end of the Jewish economy, at
which time the Christiah dispensation would begin; for the
words of Dr. Clarke are as applicable here as to the other
passage. (See Matt. xiii. 39, 40, 49, xxiv. 3, xxviii. 20,
Heb. ix. 26, 1 Cor. x. 11.) All I refer to these passages for
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580 THE ARENA.
is to show that aion does not denote an eternity of duration,
and this requires no argument. The last passage referred to,
1 Cor. x. 11, declares that the ends of the worlds (ages) had
come on the apostles, meaning, I suppose, that in their day
one age, the Jewish, ended, and the other, the Christian,
began. This proves that ages and not worlds are intended
by aion.
5. Aion is used in an adverbial phrase, and rendered
forever. Its form is eis ton aiona (cfe Tova&va), literally, to
the age. (See Matt. xxi. 19, Mark xi. 14, Luke i. 55, John
vi. 51, 58, viii. 35, xii. 34, xiv. 16, 2 Cor. ix. 9, Heb. v. 6,
vi. 20, vii. 17, 21, 1 Pet. i. 28, 25, 2 Pet. ii. 17, iii. 18,
1 John ii. 17, 2 John i. 2, Jude 13.) These are all the
places of this kind in the New Testament. The same form
is found in the Hebrew; and it evidently originated in the
Old Testament, when everything was thought of with refer-
ence to the age of the Messiah. The possession of Canaan,
the priesthood, and all the Mosaic institutions were to con-
tinue to the age, meaning the Messianic age. The expres-
sion to the age limits itself; for what is to be to a certain
period, is limited by that period. Though this seems to be
the origin of the expression, it is often used, both in the
Old Testament and the New, with no reference to any future
period; and in such cases, it must be understood according
to the nature of the subject. The servant served his master
eis ton aiona, that is, during life. When a priest filled his
office eis ton aiona, it also was during life.
6. It is used in the same way as above, only that both the
aion and the article are in the plural, thus, eis tons aionas
(eis Tovsa&vas), to the ages. (See Matt. vi. 13, Luke i. 83,
Rom. i. 25, ix. 5, xi. 36, xvi. 27, 2 Cor. xi. 31, Heb. xiii. 8.)
There does not appear to be any difference between this
form and the preceding. They are used and translated in
. the same way.
7. There is still another form, called the double plural.
The form is eis tons aionas ton aionon (ek row oiwvas rwv
aloivwv) to the ages of the ages. This is translated forever and
ever. Of course it is supposed to denote much more than
either of the other forms, which is saying that the other
forms do not denote an eternal duration. Neither does this
denote eternal duration; nor is this possible, with the word
aion, give it as many reduplications as you please; for if one
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AIONIAN PUNISHMENT. 581
aion does not mean eternity, no number of them can have
this meaning. (See Gal. i. 5, Phil. iv. 20, 1 Tim. i. 17, 2
Tim. iv. 18, Rev. i. 6.)
The same form is found in the Old Testament in a limited
sense. To the children of Israel Jehovah says, "I will
cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to
your fathers, forever and ever," olam ad olam (Jer. vii. 7).
Of Idumea it is said, " None shall pass through it forever
and ever," neUah neUahim (Isa. xxxiv. 10); Septuagint,
" from age to age."
In the Vulgate or Latin version, the form above given is
translated secula seculorum y ages of ages, exactly as it is in
the Greek, and in the margin of the Revised Version. Of
the three similar forms, the last expresses the most, and is
still limited; from which it follows that the others are still
more limited. Ages of ages, if taken literally, is a long
period, but eternity is a trifle longer.
8. Aionios may be considered a form of aion; for it is
derived from it, and takes all its significance therefrom. If
eternal duration is not in the noun, it cannot be in the
adjective. A stream cannot rise higher than the fountain
from which it flows. If aion means world, as the translators
have rendered it a few times, then aionios means worldly, or
long as the world stands. If aion mean age, as sometimes
rendered, then aionios means belonging to the age, or age
lasting.
The corresponding word, with a similar form, in the Old
Testament, denotes the duration of the Mosaic dispensation.
It is probable that in the New Testament it is employed in
the same way, to denote the duration of the Christian econ-
omy. This is as far as one can safely go, in view of the
facts that have been developed. But some hold that the
word denotes not the duration but some other quality or
attribute of the Christian religion. Assuming that aionios
denotes duration, whatever else is implied, the duration can-
not extend beyond the end of the Messiah's reign, when he
shall deliver up the kingdom to the Father, and God shall
be all in all (1 Cor. xv. 22-28).
(1) Instead of introducing a large number of passages,
which the limited space allowed to this paper will not permit,
I will notice those that relate to retribution, or reward and
punishment. There is no word so commonly employed to
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582 THE ARENA.
denote the effect of faith and obedience as life, often called
aionian life. The reason of this usage is found in the fact
that unbelievers and bad men are said to be dead, and when
converted, to pass out of death into life. In the Revision the
rendering is uniformly eternal life. (See Matt. xix. 16,
Mark v. 17, Luke x. 25, xviii. 18, Matt. xix. 29, Mark x. 30,
Luke xviii. 30, Matt. xxv. 46, John iii. 15, 16, 36, iv. 14, 36,
v. 24, 39, vi. 27, 40, 47, 54, 68, x. 28, xii. 25, 50, xvii. 2, 3,
Acts xiii. 46, 48, Rom. ii. 7, vi. 22, 23, Gal. v. 8, 1 Tim. i.
16, vi. 12, 19, Tit. i. 2, iii. 7, 1 John i. 2, ii. 25, iii. 15, v.
11, 13, 20, Jude 21.) It must not be forgotten that aionian
or eternal life is enjoyed the moment a man becomes a Chris-
tian. He "passes out of death into life." "He hath eternal
life," is often affirmed. He hath it, and he continues to
have it, so long as he remains a believer. But he may re-
nounce his faith, and what then? Is that eternal life to a
man which he enjoys only for a day or a year?
If this word mean spiritual, or Christian, there is no
impropriety in saying that the man has it, if it is but for a
brief period; but not if we give the word the sense of eternal,
unless one take the position, "Once in grace always in
grace." On the other hand, eternal punishment runs par-
allel with eternal life, and one can as surely be suffered here
as the other can be enjoyed here. But suppose the bad man
becomes a Christian, and " passes out of death into life," his
eternal punishment is of short duration. Call it severe, dis-
ciplinary, paternal, or moral, and the absurdity disappears.
It is difficult to say exactly how the word ought to be trans-
lated; but it is not difficult to see that it ought not to be
translated eternal. If punishment can be eternal, though no
one will ever suffer eternally, as some men have argued,
then there is no such difficulty as that just alluded to. The
punishment is eternal, in the sense that it will always be
suffered by the evil doer; and the knowledge of this fact,
it is thought, will exert a restraining influence throughout
eternity. That God is eternally just, and that sin will be
punished, whenever and wherever it exists,* no sensible man
will deny. But may we not hope that, in the distant future,
men will come to understand so well in what their highest
happiness consists as not to need even the thought of punish-
ment to keep them in the path of righteousness?
(2) In various forms of expression, aionios is applied to
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AIONIAN PUNISHMENT. 583
punishment in the following passages : Eternal fire (Matt.
xviii. 8, 25, 41, Jude 7). Eternal punishment (Matt. xxv.
46). Eternal destruction (2 Thess. i. 9). Eternal judgment
(Heb. vi. 2). Eternal damnation (Mark iii. 29) has become,
in the hands of the revisers, eternal sin. This is the sin against
the Holy Spirit, which in the parallel passage is limited by
the two ages to which it is confined, and is not, therefore,
eternal, as we commonly use the word. Not one of these
passages has any reference to future punishment. The fire
of gehenna, employed to represent punishment, went out
long ago, and could not denote an unlimited punishment.
All the facts developed in this investigation go to prove
that aionio* cannot denote an eternal punishment. Matt,
xxv. 46, containing " eternal life " and " eternal punish-
ment," and more frequently adduced to prove the common
theory than any other, is wholly irrelevant to the purpose,
and would appear so to any one who should look at the
whole passage, and not at the concluding verse alone. The
parable represents the reign of Christ, which began at the
close of the Jewish dispensation and is still in progress.
The gathering of the nations before him represents the
progress of the gospel. Most of the nations have been thus
gathered, and the work is still going on; the separation
goes on at the same time, with its aionian life and aionian
punishment. Who ever heard of a king having but one
separation, and that at the end of his reign ? At the close
of this reign, no mention is made of a separation, nor of
punishment. Paul mentions two things — the destruction of
all evil thing 8 (1 Cor. xv. 24, 26), and the subjection of all
intelligent moral beings, God alone excepted (verses 27, 28).
It is argued that, because the happiness of the righteous
and the punishment of the wicked are both called eternal,
the duration of the one must be the same as that of the
other; which is admitted : but it is not admitted that either
is eternal, or that these terms refer to the future life.
The word axon has been transferred, by legitimate changes,
into the Latin language. Axon becomes cevum, which has
the meaning of life, lifetime, time, period, age, men of an
age, etc. From cevum come avitas and briefer oetas, both
having essentially the same meaning as cevum. From this
last comes ceviternus^ and this becomes ceternus ; and hence
our word eternal. But none of these, not even ceternus, has
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584 THE ABENA.
generally the sense of eternal. (See " Retribution," E.
Beecher, pp. 252-53). Mr. Beecher gives examples from
Virgil, Plautus, Cicero, Ovid, Pliny, and others, of the use
of ceternus, in & limited sense, showing that it denotes dur-
ing life. So Facciolatus, in his great lexicon, says of this
word, " It is very frequently used to denote what endures for
life." ' This is the word for eternal in Matt. xxy. 46; and in
those places in which axon is translated world, the Latin is
seculum, age, as was shown to be correct before the Vulgate
was consulted. This is a decided confirmation of the views
that have been advanced concerning axon and aionios. The
fact shows that the first advocates of eternal misery who
used the Latin language, had no more to help their defence
of the doctrine than they "would have had from the original
Greek.
III. Classic Authors. Here, fortunately, I can avail my-
self of the labors of another. Rev. E. S. Goodwin of Sand-
wich, Mass., entered on the investigation of the usage of axon
and aionios in the Greek classics, A. D. 1828, and published
the result in the Christian Examiner till 1833, when the
work stopped on account of his death. But he had examined
a large number of books, and accumulated a long list of
quotations, from Homer down to Plato. I can only refer to
a portion of them, and state the result. '
(a) Homer. Iliad iv. 478, xvii. 302, ix. 415, v. 685, xvi.
453, xix. 27. Odyssey v. 152, 160, vii. 224, ix. 523, xvii. 203.
(6) Hesiod. Scut. Here. 331, Prometh. 860, Sep. con.
Theb. 219, 774, Persae 263, Suppl. 47, 570, Agam. 230,
249, 556, 716, 1150, Choeph. 24, 348, Eumen. 315, 360. In
all the above, aion is used in the sense of human life.
Hesiod has an example of special interest. He speaks of the
" ceaseless life " of Jupiter, using aion for life, but another
word for ceaseless, a convincing proof that aion alone did
not answer his purpose.
(<?) Pindar. Olym. ii. 18, 121, ix. 153, Pyth. iii. 153,
iv. 331, v. 8, viii. 139, Nem. ii. 11, iii. 130, Isthm. iii. 29,
vii. 59, viii. 27. In some of these, age is better than life,
but life is generally the meaning.
(d) Sophocles. Electra 1030, 1091, Ajax. Flag. 657,
Antig. 589, (Edip. Colon. 1812, Trachinia 2, 34, Philoct.
179, 1390, CEdip. Tir. 526, Ajax. Flag. 195, Antig. 999,
(Edip. Col. 149, Trachin. 81. This author uses the expres-
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AIONIAN PUNISHMENT. 585
sion "long-enduring life," employing aion for life, but
another word for long enduring; so that aion is neither
eternal nor long enduring.
(e) Aristotle. De Mundo cap. 2, 5, 7, Metaph. lib. xiv.
cap. 7, De Ccelo lib. i. cap. 10, lib. ii. cap. 1, lib. i. cap. 9.
This author uses the words, "From one unlimited life, or
age, to another." He employs aion for life, or age, but uses
aterminos (foipiuvos) for unlimited. He also speaks of life
or age, continuous and eternal, using aidios for eternal. He
also says, " The entire heaven is one and eternal " (aidios).
(/) Euripides. Hec. 754, Orest. 596, 971, Phceniss. 1498,
Med. 245, 645, Hippol. 1123, Androm. 1218, Suppl. 1008,
Iphigen. in Aul. 1517, in Taur. 1129, Bacch. 92, Suppl. 962,
Iphigen. in Aul. 552, Bacch. 426, Phamiss. 1537, Med. 426,
Bacch. 395, Hiral. 903, Ion. 637, Phamiss. 1545, Suppl.
1087, Helen 215, Ion. 126, Here. Fur. 673.
(<?) Plato. Protag. vol. I. p. 345, Georg. p. 448, De Leg.
lib. iii. vol. II. p. 701, lib. ii. vol. II. p. 368. Till Plato,
aionios is not found; nor is it frequent with him. It is
properly rendered lifelong ; nor could it well be otherwise,
considering the uniformity with which aion is used in the
sense of life.
These are not all the instances of the use of aion in these
authors; but they are sufficient for our purpose, nor would
the result be different if there were twice as many. It is
evident at a glance that in these writings eternal is no part
of the meaning of aion or aionios. The latter can hardly be
considered a classical word, it is so seldom used. Though
these writers often had occasion to employ words having the
meaning of eternal, they never use either of these in this
sense. The word that occurs most frequently in this way is
aidios.
IV. The Antiquities of the Jews, written by Josephus,
belongs nearly to the time of the New Testament; and we
may reasonably suppose that the usage of axon and aionios
will be similar in the two. Though Josephus often employs
both these words, he never uses them in an unlimited sense.
The following examples are a fair illustration of his manner
of employing them. He says Esau should obtain renown
forever (Moloivos). The landmarks of the Jews would last
forever (a? a&va). A Roman senator desired that the
quiet of the country might remain for all time (cfc wdyra
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586 THE ARENA.
aioiva). The remembrance of the patriarchs is called ever-
lasting (cuwnov). The Jewish soldiers were promised ever-
lasting (aiwviov) celebrity. The fame of Herod was everlasting
(aiwvtov). Antiq. I. xviii. 8, IV. viii. 18, XIX. ii. 2, I. xiii.
4, XII. vii. 3, XX. x. 5.
But when Josephus expresses the idea of endlessness, he
employs other words, generally aidios. He says the Phari-
sees believed that " The souls of the base were allotted to an
endless prison," using aidios for endless. He tells us that
the Essenes believed in "incessant punishments" for the
wicked, again using aidios.
Philo, a learned Jew of Alexandria, in Egypt, wrote
extensively, near the time of Christ and the apostles. He
employed these words in the same manner as Josephus. He
uses aionios for temporal punishment, but aidios for express-
ing the idea of eternal. All Jewish writers who made use
of the Greek language wrote much after the style of the
Greek Old Testament; and as the New Testament writers
did the same, we may judge the one class by the other.
From all of them we may learn the Old Testament usage of
these terms; and it is a fair inference that the New Testa-
ment will not digress greatly from the Greek Old Testament,
with which all Jews were familiar.
V. The Early Christians. Among the Christians of the
first three centuries with whose writings we are acquainted,
aion and aionios were freely used to denote future limited
punishment. I say limited, for most of them held either to
the annihilation of the wicked or to their universal restora-
tion to holiness and happiness. Justin Martyr calls the
punishment of the wicked aionian, or everlasting, though he
held to their annihilation. The Sibylline Oracles repeatedly
called punishment everlasting (aionios), but taught that it
would end in restoration, in answer to the earnest petition of
the righteous. " Of the Orthodox writers, nearly all allude
to, or expressly assert, a future judgment and a future
state of punishment. Seven — namely, Barnabas, Hennas,
Sibylline Oracles, Justin Martyr, Relation of Polycarp's
Martyrdom, Theophilus, and Irenaeus — call it the everlast-
ing, the eternal fire or torment; but out of these there were
certainly three who did not think it endless, since two of
them believed the damned would be annihilated, and the
other asserted their restoration to bliss " (H. Ballou, D. D.).
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AIONIAN PUNISHMENT. 587
Of Origen, who was later than the foregoing, and the
most renowned of all the church .fathers, before or after, and
withal a believer in universal restoration, Mr. Ballou says,
" In all his works, Origen freely uses the expressions, ever-
lasting fire, everlasting punishment, etc., without any expla-
nation, such as our modern prepossessions would render
necessary to prevent a misunderstanding." Is it to be sup-
posed that such a man as Origen, who made the Bible his
constant study, and was perfectly at home in the Greek
language, did not know how these terms were used in the
New Testament? Or shall we say that he used them in a
manner different from the New Testament usage ? Neither
supposition is admissible. Though Origen had views of
punishment which he might not have been able to prove
from the New Testament, it is not likely that he differed
widely from the New Testament writers in the sense he
attached to the words^under consideration.
If the question were asked, How came these terms, more
particularly aionios^ to be interpreted in an unlimited sense,
after they had for centuries been understood and explained
differently by the leading men in the church ? the answer is
not difficult. As the church changed, and converts to Chris-
tianity who had before held the doctrine of eternal misery
multiplied, the word aionios took on a meaning to meet
the wants of the popular faith. Tertullian was the first to
advance the argument, from Matt. xxv. 46, that the punish-
ment of the wicked was of the same duration as the happi-
ness of the righteous, assuming that both are in the future
world. But Augustine, at a later period, urged this argu-
ment with much greater effect, both because he was a man
of more talent and wider influence, and because the church
wa3 more generally willing and prepared to receive the
doctrine which the argument was designed to support.
Neither of these men had any knowledge of the Greek
language. When this usage became general, the new mean-
ing was firmly established.
The thought may occur to some, that as most of the New
Testament writers were not learned men, they may not have
known of any stronger terms for expressing the duration of
punishment than those which they actually employ. This is
surely a great misfortune, if the doctrine of eternal punish-
ment is of God, who desired to reveal it to the world; for
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588 THE ARENA.
millions may perish, who might have been saved if the doo-
trine had been presented to them in suitable terms! But it
so occurs that the New Testament contains some of the
strongest terms in the Greek language for expressing eternal
duration. The plea of ignorance cannot be accepted.
(1) Aidios is found in Rom. i. 20, and is applied to the
power and divinity of God. The same word is found in
Jude 6, and is figuratively applied to the divine laws in
nature, called chains or bonds, by which men and angels are
held, till they are properly punished. If punishment itself
had been denoted by this term, its eternal duration would
have been established beyond dispute. The revisers have
rendered this word everlasting ; while the same word, as the
rendering of aionios, in the Old Version, is dropped out, and
eternal is put in its place, from the supposition, apparently,
that the latter is a stronger term. Thus aionios has the
stronger rendering, and aidios the weaker! There is more
policy in this than honesty.
(2) Akatalutos occurs once, Heb. vii. 16, and is found in
the expression "endless life," referring apparently to the
immortal life. But the expression " endless punishment," is
not found, so much as once, in the Bible — not for want of
terms to express it, but for some other reason.
(3) Aperantos is the word for endless, in the expression
u endless genealogies," 1 Tim. i. 4, referring to the genealogy
of the pagan gods, apparently, and not to human genealogies,
which are not endless. But this word is never associated
with punishment. There are some more in the language, as
aterminos, adialeiptos, atleutetos, etc., that could have been
borrowed for the occasion, if necessary. Besides, it is not
difficult, in almost any language, to say of punishment that
it is without end, or has no end; but even this easy and
simple method is not adopted in the New Testament.
The only rational conclusion is, that aionian punish-
ment IS NOT ETERNAL.
VI. But there are a few considerations that will confirm
the conclusion here arrived at, which I wish to add.
First, that the doctrine of eternal punishment, if it is a
part of divine revelation, was not made known to the world
till four thousand years had passed away. Hear what Dr.
Edward Beecher says on this subject: "The only form of
retribution prominently presented in the Old Testament, as
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AIONIAN PUNISHMENT. 589
existing for four thousand years, was temporal, and did not
refer to the spiritual world and a future state. . . . What is
meant is this, that in the law of Moses, taken as a law, a
rule of life, individual or national, there is not one motive
derived from a future state and its retributions. All is
derived from this world and the present life. . . The same
is also true of the patriarchal dispensation, and of the world
before the flood. ... If we examine this whole govern-
mental system, for four thousand years, so far as express
promises or threats are concerned, we cannot infer from it
any knowledge or thought of a future life, or of any retribu-
tions beyond this life." Mr. Beecher wrote the above
statements after a most thorough examination of the Old
Testament; and it may be added that he is probably the
most learned of the remarkable family whose name he bears,
unless we include in the family one who does not bear the
name, that is, the late Professor Stowe, who may have been
his equal. Nor is Dr. Beecher the only one who has taken
this position. Bishop Warburton, in his " Legation of
Moses"; Jahn, in his "Biblical Archaeology"; Dr. George
Campbell, in his " Preliminary Dissertations," and, if I
mistake not, Milman, in his •" History of the Jews," all take
substantially the same position.
What is the conclusion? It is that the Creator of man
and of the universe allowed millions on millions of human
beings, made in his own image, to live and sin and die, sink-
ing to eternal perdition, without the least intimation of the
terrible doom that awaited them ! We may be perfectly
certain that if this doctrine was not revealed for four thou-
sand years, it was not revealed at all. If it is not revealed
in the Old Testament, it is not in the New, a more glorious
revelation.
Second. It required more than five hundred years for the
doctrine of eternal misery to become fully established in the
church. Hear again what Dr. Beecher says: "Thus it
appears, by applying penetrating tests to history, that the
modern orthodox views as to the doctrine of eternal punish-
ment, as opposed to the final restoration, were not fully
established till the middle of the century ; and that they were
not established then by thorough argument, but by imperial
authority" (Retribution, p. 246). What does this imply?
It implies a very small beginning and very slow progress.
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590 THE ARENA.
It implies that there was little or none of it in the early
church ; and when it was introduced, it " made haste slowly."
It implies that, for a long time, the great body of believers
found in the religion of Christ something which they thought
better in itself and better supported by the teachings of the
gospel.
Third. What we learn of the theological schools in the
early church confirms the opinion that eternal punishment
had few believers for several centuries. While the Chris-
tians who held to universal restoration had four theological
schools, well attended, from which ministers were constantly
going out to preach the gospel, believers in the opposite
doctrine had not a solitary school. On this point, Dr.
Beecher has been misunderstood. He speaks of six theo-
logical schools, in one of which, eternal punishment was
taught, and in one annihilation, while the four taught uni-
versal restoration. But as he afterwards explains the matter,
it appears that the first two were not schools at all, but com-
munities or " schools of thought," in which these doctrines
were held. But the four schools were real * schools, " theo-
logical seminaries," each with suitable buildings, a president,
professors, and pupils. And these four were all the schools
of this kind in Christendom. They were located at Alex-
andria in Egypt, Csesarea in Palestine, Antioch, and Edessa
or Nisibis, in Syria. The two "schools of thought" were one
in Asia Minor and one in North Africa. In the first, annihi-
lation was believed ; in the last, eternal punishment. The
inference is that these people were few. Besides, if they
wanted ministers, the four Universalist schools could send
them the very best men, fully equipped for their work and
having no occasion for being ashamed.
Fourth. The church was comparatively pure, so long as
it was in the minority, and subject to persecution, but when
it became numerous, and especially after it was the estab-
lished religion of the Roman empire, under Constantine and
his successors, it rapidly became corrupt. And it is a sig-
nificant and remarkable fact, that the very date assigned by
Dr. Beecher to the full development and establishment of
the doctrine of eternal punishment, is coincident with the
beginning of the thousand years of the Dark Ages, ending
with the Reformation. It was not the thousand years during
which Satan was bound, for he had full sway; and nearly all,
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AIONIAN PUNISHMENT. 591
from the highest to the lowest, in the church and out of the
church, became his willing votaries.
Nor was the floodtide of corruption in the least checked
by the terrors of damnation, which were hurled in thunder
tones from every pulpit in Christendom. That the doctrine
of eternal damnation prevailed universally at such a time,
and with such results, is a fact that surely does not bestow
much honor on the doctrine, especially when we reflect
that it did not grow up in the church, but was brought in
and afterwards held independent of divine revelation or
Christian teaching.
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MR. INGALLS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.
BY WILLIAM JACKSON ABMSTRONG.
Only a little while ago, ex-Senator Ingalls was the most
pronounced orator in the land against the rapid concentra-
tion of capital. Since his fall from office he has lashed him-
self with increasing industry into prominence as the defender
of what he so recently and conspicuously assailed. At
heart, Mr. Ingalls is perhaps as nearly as may be a socialist.
That is to say, his aggressive intellectual proclivity would
swerve him naturally, if not almost irrepressibly, toward
industrial democracy. But by history he has been what he
has judged he could afford to be. At least that which the
country believes it has seen of him in recent years, is the not
very commanding spectacle of his cowering before the
menace of his state into a disavowel of certain policies and
opinions attributed to him relative to politico-economic ques-
tions, of his humiliation at the hands of his constituents in
spite of the recantation, and of his nimble talents placed
once more, in his character as a free lance, unreservedly at
the service of the doctrines so lately repudiated. In fact,
penance more suppliant and ample than Mr. Ingalls is now
again offering at his first altars for brief apostasy on the floor
of the Senate might not seem easy to parallel. Certainly
the gods whom he serves to-day should be thoroughly
placated, were it not for the fatal facility offered by his case
of the appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober, or, con-
cretely speaking, that he has answered himself in advance.
Permitted to be his own historian, Mr. Ingalls would
doubtless be able to give a considerably modified version of
his alleged public and personal inconsistencies — of what, in
short, seem to be generally credited as his almost marvellous
feats of moral and mental tergiversation. But certain it is
that the light of self contradiction, if not stultification, with-
out corresponding profit, is the light in which Mr. Ingalls
has been for several years viewed by the large majority of
his fellow citizens who, since his political lapse, have kept
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MR. INGALLS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 593
track of his personal career. For this reason his utterances
from the platform or through the columns of the newspapers,
on economic and other topics, have fallen with diminished
impressiveness on the public ear. From another point of
view, however, they may be allowed to have a somewhat
larger claim to notice — that is, from their wide publicity
and from the piquant, even if sometimes flippant, boldness
which not infrequently lend them the plausible air of state-
ments of large general principles underlying the subjects
which they concern. For it is as undeniably true that Mr.
Ingalls has of late set himself the task of giving rhetorical
point and force to certain trite generalizations respecting
economic questions, as that, less than three years ago, in his
ever memorable recantation before the Senate, he placed
epigrams in the mouths of those holding views the veiy
opposite of those he now professes concerning these ques-
tions. Less scholarly and wise than the great masters of the
doctrines of the conservative economy he champions, he is
characteristically less prudent in their assertion, thereby
offering the tenets he would aid as a peculiarly shining mark
to the logic which rends them. For this reason, as well as
from the fact that none other has succeeded in compressing
into similarly brief compass an equal number of sophisticated
misstatements on economic affairs, one is more than commonly
tempted to accept Mr. Ingalls for the moment as the especial
champion of the doctrines he defends, and to offer such
answer as may still be needed in any quarter to their
hackneyed iteration.
In order to present fairly the body of argument, if it may
so be called, of those who resist propositions for radical
industrial reforms, as well as to omit no justice toward Mr.
Ingalls, I prefer to quote freely from his recent syndicate
letter to the newspapers, his latest publication on this theme.
Mr. Ingalls says : —
Utopia is yet an undiscovered country. Ideal perfection in society,
like the mirage of the desert, recedes as it is approached. Human
nature remains unchanged in every environment. Will, foresight,
industry, sobriety, thrift, and economy succeed. Irresolution, folly,
idleness, waste, and drunkenness fail. To him that hath is given,
and from him that hath not is taken away even that which he seem-
eth to have. To one is given five talents, to another two, to another
one — to every man according to his ability. The wicked and sloth-
ful servant digs in the earth and hides his Lord's money, and is cast
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594 THE ARENA.
into outer darkness to weep and gnash his teeth. The good and
faithful servant puts his five talents to the exchangers, and is made
ruler over many things.
The condition of the masses is immeasurably bettered with the
advance of civilization. The poorest artisan to-day has free enjoy-
ment of comforts and conveniences that monarchs with their treas-
ures could not purchase five centuries ago. But De Tocqueville
observed the singular anomaly that as the state of the masses
improves they find it more intolerable, and discontent increases.
Wants and desires are multiplied more rapidly than the means of
gratification. Education, daily newspapers, travel, libraries, parks,
galleries, and shop windows have widened the horizon of working
men and women, increased their capacity for enjoyment, familiarized
them with luxuries and the advantages of wealth. Political instruc-
tion has taught them the equality of man and made them acquainted
with the power of the ballot. False teachers have convinced them
that all wealth is created by labor, and that every man who has more
than he can earn with his hands by daily wages is a thief, that the
capitalist is a foe, and the millionnaire a public enemy who should be
outlawed and shot at sight.
Although the tendency to centralization of capital is excessive and
should be checked, it is not true that the poverty of the poor is due
to the wealth of the rich, nor that the laborer is robbed by the
employment of capital. On the contrary, it is those countries where
capital is most concentrated that wages are highest and the neces-
saries of life cheapest and most abundant. The statement of Marx,
so often repeated, that extreme wealth is the cause of extreme
poverty, is a fallacy. It might be correct if it were the partition of
the estate of a deceased person among his heirs, or the division of
prize money among the captors of a galleon; but as applied to the
distribution of the assets of a nation engaged in productive industries
by the interchangeable activity of its economic energies, it is an
indefensible absurdity to assert that the increase of wealth in one
class necessarily involves an increase of poverty in another. Each
receives that portion to which it is entitled by its contributions to the
common fund of wealth that is created by the combined efforts of
labor and capital. /
The method of increasing the possessions of the poor is not by
compulsory or voluntary transfer from those who have to those who
have not, not by the single tax, the abolitition of rent, interest, and
profits, but by an increase of the aggregated wealth through greater
production and wider distribution.
Great private fortunes are inseparable from high civilization.
The richest community in the world, per capita, at this time is the
tribe of Osage Indians. Its aggregate wealth is ten times greater,
proportionately, than that pf the United States. It is held in com-
mon. Community of property may not be the cause of barbarism, *
but in every state, as social and economic equality is approached and
wealth " created by labor " without the intervention of capital, as in
China and India, wages are low, the laborer is degraded, and pro-
gress impossible. Were the wealth of the United States equally
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MB. INGALLS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 595
distributed among its inhabitants at this time, the sum that each
would possess, according to the census, would be about one thousand
dollars. Were this equation to continue, progress obviously would
cease. Had this been the prevalent condition from the beginning we
should have remained stationary. Only as wealth becomes concen-
trated, can nature be subjugated and its forces made subservient to
civilization. Until capital, through machinery, harnesses steam,
electricity, and gravitation, and exempts man from the necessity of
constant toil to procure subsistence, humanity stands still or retro-
grades. Railroads, telegraphs, fleets, cities, libraries, museums, uni-
versities, cathedrals, hospitals — all the great enterprises that exalt
and embellish existence and ameliorate the conditions of human life
— come from the conception of money in the hands of the few.
Even if it were desirable to limit accumulations, society possesses
no agency by which it can be done. It has no bed of Procrustes upon
which to lay its victims. The mind is indomitable. The differences
between men are organic and fundamental. They are established by
ordinances of the Supreme Power and cannot be repealed by act of
Congress. In the contest between brains and numbers, brains have
always won and always will.
The social malady is grave and menacing, but the disease is not so
dangerous as the doctors and the drugs. The political quacks, with
their sarsaparilla and plasters and pills, are treating the symptoms
instead of the complaint. The free coinage of silver, the increase of
the per capita, the restriction of immigration, the Australian ballot,
and qualified suffrage are important questions, but they might all be
accomplished without effecting the slightest amelioration of the con-
dition of the great masses of the wage workers of the United States.
Instead of disfranchising the poor and ignorant, it would be well to
increase their wealth and their intelligence, and make them fit to
vote. A proscribed class inevitably become conspirators, and free
institutions can only be made secure by the education, prosperity,
and contentment of those upon whom their existence depends.
All this is not only very characteristic of Mr. Ingalls, but
of the logical method of the whole school which he repre-
sents. This sort of presentation of a subject is catching and
plausible, even slightly glittering. If you do not read it
twice you can possibly imagine it to contain truth. Review
it or examine its statements, and they are found to be worth-
less, having no bearing upon conclusions — in short, no
relation to argument or reasoning. The vice of this method
of treating a subject is that its premises are a haphazard
mixture of falsehoods and half-truths, occasionally and fleet-
# ingly suggestive, it may be, but leading nowhere. Flavor
the mixture with a few touches of pathetic fatalism — to the
effect that rich and poor have always existed, that man is a
discontented animal, at best, that human legislation is
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596 THE ARENA.
impotent for remedy — and you have exhausted the argu-
mentative device of the quasi economists who in these days
are frantically attempting to beat back the rising demand for
a juster distribution of the products of civilized industry.
Let us inspect a few specimen bricks of Mr. Ingalls'
logical edifice. The illustration will be entertaining. He
dreamily tells us that " Utopia is yet an undiscovered coun-
try"; that "Ideal perfection in society, like a mirage of the
desert, recedes as it is approached."
These misty truism^ do not appear to have very directly to
do with any matter practically in hand — the matter, for
instance, as Mr. Ingalls elsewhere notices, that " One half of
the possessions of the American people are under the direct
control of less than thirty thousand persons and corpora-
tions." If your neighbor reminded you that his family was
starving while you and others were revelling in more than
abundance, the assurance that "Ideal perfection in human
society recedes like a mirage of the desert," etc., would
hardly appear to him either in the light of a pertinent reply
or a satisfying morsel. An offer to lay an immediate tax on
your own and others' superfluity to relieve your neighbor's
scarcity would seem to be very much more to the purpose;
and if history has not thought of some equally direct and
sensible means of lightening human want, or has tried such
means ineffectually, so much the worse for old barbarism.
Mr. Ingalls proceeds. " Human nature," he says, u remains
unchanged in every environment." We .can allow him the
platitude. But there are some hundred or more industrial
communistic schemes, in active working order, dotted over
the face of our modern competitive civilization, and in
which we may admit, if Mr. Ingalls so desires, that human
nature is unchanged from, and precisely the same as, the
human nature in the competitive world outside. There is
this difference, however — the greater number of these socie-
ties are successful and affluent. There exists within them
neither individual riches nor individual poverty. There is
no want — the difference that separates worlds! But it is
the vicious insinuation of Mr. Ingalls' statement, that no %
human industrial organization is possible to which poverty
and want are not essential incidents. If it be his contention
simply that socialism, or anything approaching it, is not
practicable on a large scale, let him apply himself honestly
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MB. INGALLS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 597
to the argument. Sonorous generalizations on the identity
of human nature under diversity of environment, in the
language of the comic opera, " have nothing to do with the
case." There are many excellently well-educated persons
now alive, who, seeing that the functions of modern govern-
ments are already in part socialistic, and that the wages of
government officials, as Mr. Ingalls himself observes, are
larger than in any private business, and tending to a more
generous distribution of wealth, venture to premise that
these socialistic functions may be largely if not indefinitely
extended, to the increasing comfort and advantage of society.
Such propositions in detail are proper subjects for fair
debate. But evasions do not answer for .reasons, nor
rhetorical indirections for argument.
The next brace of statements introduced to support this
curious pleading are similarly in character. Says Mr.
Ingalls: "Will, foresight, industry, sobriety, thrift, and
economy succeed. Irresolution, folly, idleness, waste, and
drunkenness fail," — a bald truth and a bald falsehood side
by side ! As for the truth, namely, that vice and idleness
and their like fail, neither this criticism nor society is largely
concerned therewith, as the contention of reformers is not
primarily for the vicious. As to the falsehood, that " sobri-
ety, thrift, economy, etc., succeed," Mr. Ingalls has himself
refuted it in his reference elsewhere to the man "able and
willing to work, who perishes for want of embers, rags, and
a crust." One of the saving features of Mr. Ingalls' here-
sies is that, through his fatal proneness to both sides of a
question, given a little rope he invariably hangs himself.
But to any actual observer of the facts of our present indus-
trial civilization, none is more striking than that the exer-
cise of any or all of the sententious virtues enumerated by
Mr. Ingalls is helpless to guarantee success to any human
being; and nowhere does the injustice of our chaotic com-
petitive scheme appear so flagrant and pathetic as in the
inequality of its rewards to the actual benefactors of society.
This, as will presently be seen, Mr. Ingalls thoroughly knows
• and admits. But the million of working men in our own
country, " able and willing " and chronically out of work,
abruptly puts to flight this whole theory in the air as to the
necessary success, under our industrial order, of the pruden-
tial virtues.
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598 THE ARENA.
Mr. Ingalls naively tells us that " The condition of the
masses is immeasurably bettered with the advance of civiliza-
tion " ; that " The poorest artisan to-day has free enjoj-ment
of comforts and conveniences that monarchs with their treas-
ures could not purchase five centuries ago." Recovering
from the shock of the originality of this information and of
our compassion for the tragically unconvenienced monarchs
of the old time, it may be pertinent to suggest that because
a feudal prince lacked the luxury of Axminster rugs, is not
a particularly relevant reason why, amid the redundancy of
carpets, modern working men should be content with bare
floors; and that the connection, generally, between mediaeval
poverty and squalor and the justice of the demand of nine-
teenth century freemen for an equitable portion of the riches
and comforts of their time, is not glaringly conspicuous.
But, following his bent, Mr. Ingalls himself, as will be
observed, explains the alleged "anomaly" of this demand
with a wonted quotation from the wisdom of De Tocqueville,
and it is not necessary to dwell on tliis hack absurdity, im-
pressed for the needs of argument, further than to remind
his readers that feudal poverty itself was more humane than
our modern competitive wealth, in that its scheme embraced
some guarantee, even though scanty, for the subsistence of
the laboring masses.
" False teachers," says Mr. Ingalls, " have convinced work-
ing men and women that all wealth is created by labor," —
that is, physical labor; which is to say that Mr. Ingalls,
accepting the priggish exposition of certain outworn books
of pedagogic economy, denies this proposition. All the same,
the proposition, in its substantial and widest sense, is irref-
ragable. With the exception of the contributions to human
possession by the rare inventors, and the services of the
professional classes, litterateurs, and artists — who add, also,
at times imaginative values to commercial products (all
of which classes tend to remain poor) — the wealth of the
world is the result, pure and simple, of manual labor, —
"railroads, telegraphs, fleets, cities," and all the rest. The
work of "promoters," speculators, so-called captains of in-
dustry, etc., does not count against the truth of the state-
ment; since the energy of these classes is not employed in
swelling the general wealth of society, but in the seizure
of that wealth for the engorgement of personal fortunes.
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MR. INGALLS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 599
Stripped of their opportunities for the selfish monopoly of
wealth, the organizing talent of these classes, so far as it is
exceptional, could readily be hired at a price representing,
not as now, the total products corralled and appropriated by
them, but its actual service to society. Nothing can be sim-
pler than the demonstration in detail of all that is involved
in these plain suggestions. It is the defect of the most ordi-
nary analysis of common industrial facts that makes the
failure of the whole school of the bookish and shallow
theories which Mr. Ingalls accepts.
He proceeds to instruct us that " Although the tendency
to centralization of capital is excessive and should be checked
[observe that it is the whole burden of Mr. Ingalls' argu-
ment that it cannot be checked], it is not true that the
poverty of the poor is due to the wealth of the rich, nor that
the laborer is robbed by the employment of capital"; that,
" on the contrary, it is in those countries where capital is
most concentrated that wages are highest and the necessaries
of life cheapest and most abundant." This may be con-
sidered among the more iridescent examples of what the late
Mr. James Russell Lowell might have termed Mr. Ingalls'
stern-foremost victories in logic. If, indeed, the poor are
not robbed by the wealth of the rich, and labor is most
favored in countries where capital is most concentrated, why
should the concentration of capital be checked, or ever be
regarded as " excessive " ? Why, on the other hand, should
it not be stimulated and perennially encouraged to the last
point? But here, again, Mr. Ingalls' dictum that the
poverty of the poor is not due to the wealth of the rich, so
far as it has any pertinence to conditions in our own country
— which he is supposed to be mainly discussing — is a
palpable untruth. The contrary proposition is the fact.
Either the thirty thousand persons and corporations which,
Mr. Ingalls is fond of assuring us, " own and control more
than one half of the wealth of the United States," hold
their wealth at the detriment of the great mass of their
fellow citizens, or they do not. If they do not, then the
statement of this stupendous ownership has no significance
unless as an assertion that this paltry handful of Americans
have been gifted by nature with powers so marvellous that
they have been able to produce more wealth than all the
remaining nearly sixty-five millions of their countrymen —
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600 THE ARENA.
•an absurdity so great that it howls for the relief of common
sense. It is equally demonstrable that the existence of one
million or more of Americans, u able and willing " and yet
perennial paupers for the want of opportunity to work, is the
immediate result of the control of the nation's wealth under
its present congested forms, rather than by its use under
a wise co-ordination for the development of the country's
waiting resources; the remedy not being here the matter
under consideration.
As to the assertion that it is in those countries where
capital is most concentrated that wages are highest and the
necessaries of life are cheapest and most abundant, why does
not Mr. Ingalls instruct us that great cities are the localities
of densest population, or that, since an ostrich has more
feathers than a fish, it follows that locomotion on land is
more conducive to the growth of quills than swimming in
the sea? Such novelties of information would afford an
equally dazzling spectacle of acuteness in reasoning. He
would not even have to supplement the exhibition with the
statement that the Osage Indians are the richest community
in the world per capita, as the conclusive demonstration of
the decivilizing power of communal wealth.
It is an "indefensible absurdity," he assures us, "to assert
that the increase of wealth in one class necessarily involves
an increase of poverty in another. Each receives," he
says, " that portion to which it is entitled by its contribu-
tions to the common fund of wealth that is created by the
combined efforts of labor and capital." Upon these essential
asseverations it may seem preferable once more to oppose
Mr. Ingalls, the economic publicist, with the words of the
Kansas statesman who, as recently as the January of a little
more than two years ago, startled his constituents and his
political associates in the body of. which he was a member
with the following declaration: " By some means, some
device, some machination, some incantation, honest or other-
wise, some process that cannot be defined, less than the two-
thousandth part of our population have obtained possession,
and have kept out of the penitentiary, in spite of the means
they have adopted to acquire it, of more than one half of
the entire accumulated wealth of the country. That is not
the worst, Mr. President. It has been chiefly acquired by
men who have contributed little to the material welfare of the
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MR. INGALLS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 601
country r , and by processes that I do not care in appropriate
terms to describe. 19 (The italics are by the writer.) This
statesman sonorously continued: " A financial system under
which more than one half of the enormous wealth of the
country, derived from the bounty of nature and the labor of
all, is owned by a little more than thirty thousand people,
while one million American citizens able and willing to toil
are homeless tramps, starving for bread, requires readjust-
ment. A social system which offers to tender, virtuous, and
dependent women the alternative between suicide and beg-
gary, is organized crime, for which some day unrelenting
justice will demand atonement and expiation." * .
Mr. Ingalls is always the happiest protagonist and answer
to himself. He leaves the burden easy and grateful to all
others who essay the facile task of opposing him.
This is the briefest examination of a few of the specimen
bricks, as I prefer to name them, of this representative
edifice of reasoning, intended to confound the surging tide
of demand, in this and other modern countries, for equity to
the industrial masses — the modern people themselves. The
rationale and necessity of this demand even Mr. Ingalls 9
intellect, shifting, flickering, vacillating, unfruitful, as it is,
for his own ends or for any consistent ends, is seen to
perceive acutely. For the purpose of dissipating his present
uneasy conclusions, he has formulated, in the paper under
review, the causes of this necessary demand with more than
adequate phrasing — " the inequality of fortunes and the
obvious injustice of the unequal distribution of wealth
among men"; "the existence of hunger when there is an
excess of food, of want in the midst of superfluity"; that
"one man should have possessions beyond the needs of
extravagance to squander, and another, able and willing to
work, should perish for want of embers, rags, and a crust.
So long," he adds, u as such conditions continue, the key
to the cipher in which destiny is written is not revealed, the
brotherhood of man is a phrase, justice is a formula, and the
divine code illegible."
But turning to the question of what he. implies to be the
remedies proposed by those u who are engaged in the recon-
struction of society," Mr. Ingalls again plunges floundering
* Speech of Hon. John J. Ingalls of Kansas, in the Senate of the United States,
Wednesday, Jan. 14, 1891.
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602 THE ARENA.
into his favorite sea of rhetoric, buffeting men of straw and
landing nowhere. " The method," he says, " of increasing
the possessions of the poor is not by compulsory or voluntary
transfer from those who have to those who have not, hot by
the single tax, the abolition of rent, interest, and profits, but
by an increase of the aggregate wealth through greater pro-
duction and wider distribution." Certainly, that is the pre-
cise question at issue — wider distribution! — the issue he
here evades and against which his whole argument is sup-
posed to be intended — if anything clear can be gathered of
Mr. Ingalls' logical intentions on any point.
44 Great private fortunes," he says, " are inseparable from
high civilization." Who has discovered this ? The Osage
Indians, he asserts, are not duly privy to this secret. Other
persons more wise than the Osage may be equally ignorant
of the truth of this ipse dixit. The examples of history do
not give it any conclusive support. On the contrary, they
tend to show that wherever in a few hands " wealth accumu-
lates men decay " ; that all the great civilizations have
swerved abruptly toward ruin from the moment of their
dominance by plutocracies — as in the instance of the Roman
empire, which, in the time of the Caesars, as Mr. Ingalls
assures us with rhetorical fulness, was practically owned by
two thousand lords. Mr. Webster, a statesman whose acute-
ness may be admitted to have nearly equalled that of Mr.
Ingalls, said, " The freest government cannot long endure
where the tendency of the law is to create a rapid accumu-
lation of property in the hands of the few."
44 Railroads, telegraphs, fleets, cities, libraries, museums,
universities, cathedrals, hospitals — all the great enterprises
that exalt and embellish existence and ameliorate the condi-
tions of life," says Mr. Ingalls, 44 come from the conception
of money in the hands of the few," — once more a state-
ment so baldly and notoriously untrue that one wonders at
the temerity that conceives its utterance; since, on the con-
trary, again, nearly all the greater monuments of man, pres-
ent and past, including cathedrals, museums, universities,
libraries, fleets, many cities and even railroads, and not a few
telegraphs, have been the creations of public wealth — from
.the conception of wealth in the hands of the many.
44 Even were it desirable to limit accumulation, society
possesses no agency," .Mr. Ingalls asserts, 44 by which it can
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MB. INGALLS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 603
be done. It has no bed of Procrustes upon which to lay its
victims." Still, to the contrary, society has at its command
a hundred expedients, if it chooses, for abridging the accu-
mulation of private fortunes; and no class of rational
reformers, so far as can be seen, is hunting for beds of
Procrustes upon which to stretch Mr. Ingalls' rhetorical vic-
tims. For its actual victims, according to the repeated and
perfervid confessions of Mr. Ingalls himself, society prepares
and keeps its million of couches of more than Procrustean
torture.
"The mind is indomitable," says Mr. Ingalls. "The
differences between men are organic and fundamental.
They are established by ordinances of the Supreme Power
and cannot be repealed by act of Congress. In the contest
between brains and numbers, brains have always won and
always will." All of which — carefully remembering that in
all the great progressive movements of history numbers have
also possessed the brains — is unusually excellent oratory
and, for Mr. Ingalls, unusually true, but having no slightest
bearing, earthly or other, upon certain very simple and
practicable remedies against the encroachment of private
fortunes upon the rights of the many — to wit, the remedies
so successfully employed in recent years by scores of English
and American cities, of assuming public control of municipal
functions, such as the supplying of water, gas, transportation,
etc., thereby cutting off, as they have done in single locali-
ties, millions of dollars from the possible possessions of the
hitherto alleged "brains," and transferring them to the
pockets of the hitherto plundered " numbers." Despite airy
generalizations, the process of such clear remedies against
the " indomitable might of brains " appears to be susceptible
of various and indefinite extension. As Mr. Ingalls rightly
apprehends, the conception of this process includes the
already triumphant scheme in several countries of the absorp-
tion for the public good of the railroads and telegraphs,
whose management in private hands, by his admission, has
been guilty of " shameless robbery, gambling, and extortion,
and has piled up stupenduous fortunes by practices that are
as repugnant to financial integrity as they are shocking to
public conscience."
Recurring, in conclusion, to certain preliminary utterances
of Mr. Ingalls in his recent paper, there may be noted strains
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604 THE ARENA.
like the following: "At last, after much random groping
and many bloody and desperate combats with kings and
dynasties, privilege, caste, and prerogative, old abuses, for-
merly intrenched orders, titles, and classes, the ultimate
ideal of government has been realized and the people are
supreme. The poor, the toilers, the laborers, are the rulers.
They make the laws; they form the institutions. Louis
XIV. said, 4 1 am the state.' Here the wage workers, the
farmers, the blacksmiths, the fishermon, the artisans, say,
'We are the state.' Confiscation, pillage, and the enrich-
ment of royal favorites are unknown. Every man, what-
ever may be his nativity, faculty, education, morality, has an
equal chance with every other in the race of life." Here it
may be parenthetically recalled that this latter argument is
the favorite advertisement of the Louisiana lottery swindle.
Our orator continues: "Legislation, whether good or bad,
is enacted by the majority, and bears equally upon all. The
means of education are widely diffused, and the desire to
know and the opportunities for happiness are commensurate
with the capacity to enjoy." Closing this patriotic burst, Mr.
Ingalls, with the familiar Professor Sullivan rush, rides once
more to his self-unhorsing: " Vaster political power ," he tells
us, " is consolidated in the hands of the few, and more stu-
pendous fortunes are acquired by individuals under a republic
than under a monarchy. The great gulf between the rich and
the poor yawns wider and wider day by day" (The italics
are not Mr. Ingalls'.) He further informs us that the
"largest private fortunes in the world have been accumu-
lated in the last half century in the United States "; that we
have "scores of men whose annual incomes exceed in amount
the entire fortunes of Morris and Washington, the richest
men in the country less than a century ago, and one Ameri-
can estate that surpasses the assessed valuation of the four
smallest states of the Union when the government was estab-
lished, in 1789." Surely, this is confession with a vengeance
of the political power of the majority in the republic, and of
the " limitless opportunities of the masses for happiness com-
mensurate with the capacity to enjoy"! and this is reason-
ing requiring no commentary "save the sound of its own
dashings"!
Mr. Ingalls may not be called pusillanimous. The high
office in which he has gained the ear of the public, even for
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MR. INGALLS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 605
such pitiful maunderings as these, forbids the charge. We
would not do him a personal wrong. But could exhibition
more abject of intellectual cross purposes, of self-inflicted
mental confusion and defeat, be demanded of the intellectu-
ally lost than the employment of such suicidal logical gym-
nastics as these to establish inference for an anti-social cause!
Let the promptings be from what source they may, such
wasting battles of mind with itself are their own spectacle
and commentary.
" To admit that ignorance, wretchedness, disease, want,
poverty, and degradation of society are inevitable and irre-
mediable is to impeach God," says Mr. In galls; and then
proceeds to characterize as " vagaries " and " chimeras " all
struggle and suggestion prompted by the honest human
heart to lift the degradation from our kind. To the brain
and race that profess to be in any measure free for the ends
of progress, such fatalism is worse than miserable — it is
mindless ; it is more than mindless, it is maudlin. Its infer-
ence is in accord neither with history nor with fact.
44 If," says Mr. Ingalls, 44 the unequal distribution of the
burdens and benefits of society depends upon legislation, in-
stitutions, and government, then under a system like ours
the equilibrium should be restored. If wealth results from
unjust laws, and poverty from legislative oppression, the
remedy is in the hands of the victims." Assuredly! Who,
save Mr. Ingalls and his fellow fatalists, denies it? All
intelligent reformers assert it. It is simply a question of
the education of the conscience and will of the people. The
problem is compact in that. With many a far-fetched, glit-
tering phrase the school of Mr. Ingalls asserts that the will
of the people is helpless in the presence of industrial wrong,
that legislation is impotent, that institutions are unchange-
able, that the power of cunning to oppress and of human
greed to control is eternal, that the ages must roll and the
idle plutocrat continue to ride in his chariot and purple, and
the toiling artisan and peasant to form the pavement for his
wheel.
But what have tinkling phrases to do with accomplished
facts? What answer have the phrase mongers to the fifty
American cities which within a little more than a decade
have sloughed off the tyranny of monopoly in their public
supplies and reclaimed from the making of millionnaires the
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606 THB ARENA.
heritage and wealth of the people ? What have sophisticate
half statements as to the failure of historic experiments to do
with a score of already successful modern expedients? If
the American people will to own their railroads and tele-
graphs, or to abolish a score of similar private monopolies
established upon the appropriation of public rights, it is not
in any slightest degree a question of infringing upon immu-
table laws or theories of the " indomitable mind of man,"
but of immediate, common-sense expediency for the needs of
our changed modern civilization. That Rome, who ground
her corn in mortars, and the Middle Ages could not do these
things would not seem greatly to affect the problem. In
fact, they had no railways. And such matters are no longer
hypotheses or experiments; they have been tried and not
found wanting. Wisely controlled co-operative establish-
ments have in our own country already retrieved from
capitalists millions of wealth to the hands of industry. They
need the further encouragement of our laws.
Some of our states have ousted from their borders the
foreign land monopoly. It will be precisely as simple and
precisely as easy, when we have enough intelligence to desire
it, to suppress the home robber of our soil — to crush the
speculator. If his peculiar " business " inclines him to seek
a " less hostile jurisdiction," society will struggle to endure
the lonesomeness of his absence.
So much for the political quacks, and so much for the
44 sarsaparilla and plasters and pills," that are treating the
symptoms of our industrial complaint!
The American democracy from the beginning has not
greatly prided itself upon precedents. The tide of discussion
and reflection has set inward. A civilization that has been
in itself a revolution in human history, that has accomplished
unprecedented things, that possesses a heart, that, even
though staggering under the shock and burden of unexpected
and distorting industrial forces, has kept its eye upon equality
and the ideal right, will not, perhaps, greatly disturb itself
over ancient precedent or abstractions of the impossible, as it
advances its step to the ultimate goal of justice for our kind.
Ite better faith is indeed in the indomitable mind of man.
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THE SOUTH IS AMERICAN.
BY JOSHUA W. CALDWELL.
A great deal has been said and written by Southern men
of the need for a history of the South. The admirers of the
late Henry Grady were fond of predicting, before his death,
that to his brilliant genius the South would become indebted
for a history which would fully " vindicate " her. It is
respectfully submitted that the South does not need vindica-
tion, and that in any event she must rely entirely upon the
facts. We need not expect and should not desire any vin-
dication except the truth.
It is highly improbable that the genius of Mr. Grady would
have endured the drudgery of historical examination and
composition, and it is certain that the time has not come for
writing the true and final history of the long struggle which
culminated in the war.
Now is the time to gather the material, to preserve it for
the hand of the historian who shall extract from it the truth,
but not until generations shall have passed, and feeling and
prejudice shall have ceased to obscure and distort truth and
judgment. We may rely upon it, the truth will finally be
told, and the world will know it.
The war ended twenty-eight years ago, but it is still the
habit of the North to think of the people of the states which
attempted to secede as enemies of the Union and of the Con-
stitution. It is the purpose of this article to present certain
facts in aid of a correct judgment on this point, and this will
involve the consideration of some matters of early history.
It is one of the hopeful signs of the times that throughout
the South there is a positive and growing interest in his-
torical research. A great deal has already been written, but
such writings as have attracted more than local attention
have been in the main polemical. As certain Northern writ-
ers — like Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge — who possess extensive
knowledge of bare facts, but not of their true relations and
significance, have studied and written without that degree
007
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608 THE ARENA.
of sympathy which is indispensable to a correct understand-
ing, so the Southern writers too of tenjhave manifested exces-
sive sympathy. Mr. Lodge's chapters on Old Virginia make
that colony the dreary abode of indolence, ignorance, horse
racing, wine bibbing, and cock fighting. The Southern writ-
ers, upon the contrary, are inclined to idealize it. The
coarse, horsy, gambling, deep-drinking planters who fill Mr.
Lodge's chapters have no place in their pages, but only the
Beverlys, the Birds, the Randolphs, and the Lees — no ordi-
nary mortals, but only fine ladies, fine gentlemen, fine birds,
fine feathers. Gallants in flowing wigs and spreading ruf-
fles, patrician dames and dainty damosels in rustling silks
and rigid brocades, awfully hooped, go their stately ways,
and dance graceful minuets.
These writers are special pleaders. The truth is that the
founders of Virginia and of the other Southern colonies were
average men and women of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, and had their full share of the vices and their full
share of the virtues of the times. In the main they were
English, with a comparatively slight intermixture of Irish,
Scotch Irish, Dutch Germans, and Huguenots.
Virginia, the oldest and most important of the Southern
colonies, may be treated as thoroughly representative, and it
is important, therefore, to know who the Virginians were.
The fact first to be noticed is, that of all the British colo-
nies, Virginia was the most English. In blood the Virgini-
ans were not more English than the Puritans; but they held
to the English forms and methods, social, political, and relig-
ious, whereas the New Englanders attempted to set up a
theocracy which should realize the ideals of the Puritans
of old England and of the Covenanters of Scotland. In
Virginia institutions were as English as the people.
The Puritan was, from the beginning, a malcontent, a
rebel; not so much, however, for political as for religious
reasons. Colonial Virginia, upon the contrary, was, except
during the short-lived insurrection known as Bacon's Re-
bellion, constantly upon the most amicable terms with the
home country and government. • It is familiar history that
because Virginia did, during the hunched years between
Bacon's Rebellion and the war of independence, enjoy
unbroken peace and quiet, she was accused of indifference
to popular rights. This construction of her conduct makes
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THE SOUTH 18 AMERICAN. 609
the sudden appearing of her patriots of the Revolution the
most astounding fact in history.
The Puritan repudiated, as a thing abominable, the
Church of England; the Virginian established the Church
and persecuted dissenters. The Puritan embraced the Com-
monwealth, and made haste to banish the royal governor;
the Virginian was steadfastly loyal to the Stuarts, invited
the banished king to plant his sceptre anew in the virgin
soil of his faithful colony, and refused to recognize the
Commonwealth until Cromwell's war ships trained their
cannon upon his capital.
To the superficial observer; Massachusetts and Virginia
may appear to have been essentially unlike. In reality the
unlikeness was superficial, and beneath it was a likeness
which was essential. Their people were of the same race,
and had the same conception of liberty and the same love
of liberty. In the end, they two were to lead all the other
colonies to the establishment of their common principles.
The Puritans were mainly of the English middle class,
and so were the Virginians. It is true that the rich planters
dominated Virginia, and that her institutions became, in a
measure, aristocratic; but it is to be remembered that the
love pf liberty has never been confined to any class of
Englishmen, apd at all events the supply of plain people
in Virginia was abundant.
Massachusetts was turbulent, Virginia placid; but when
the time came, Virginia was as quick as her Northern sister
to declare for freedom. When Massachusetts defied Eng-
land, it was George Washington of Virginia who declared
that to aid her he was ready to raise and subsist a regiment
at his own expense. If Massachusetts gave Otis, Hancock,
Adams, to the good cause, Virginia gave Randolph, Marshall,
Madison, Jefferson, and Washington. Thus it appears that
Virginia, the typical and dominant Southern colony, bore,
in the struggle for independence, a part no less trying, no
less important, no less honorable, than Massachusetts.
As Virginia had been the richest and most influential
of the Southern colonies, she became the controlling
Southern state. Indeed, for a time, she led all the states
of the Union; but gradually, and from causes which need
not be considered here, the larger Northern states outgrew
her in population and in wealth. There was no time, how-
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610 THE AKENA.
ever, prior to 1861, when she was not the foremost and the
most influential Southern state.
It is a fact of great importance to our present purpose
that the controlling elements of population in the younger
Southern states are very largely of Virginian origin. It is
correct, both geographically and politically speaking, to call
the four Southern colonies the " Virginia group."
The Puritan influences of New England and the Dutch
influences of New York never reached the Carolinas nor
Georgia, but over all of them the Virginia influence was
supreme. Socially, politically, and religiously the Southern
colonies were of the same type; and it was mainly, almost
exclusively, Virginia and the Virginians that shaped their
institutions and determined the character and quality of
their civilization. This civilization was essentially Anglo-
Saxon. It is true that the population of the Carolinas was
less homogeneous than that of Virginia, but the great and
controlling majority was Anglo-Saxon.
We may then treat these facts as established, that among
the Southern colonies and the Southern states Virginia was
dominant; that Virginia was one of the most patriotic and
thoroughly American of all the colonies; and that by study-
ing Virginia we may find the salient and essential qualities
of the people of the South, and of their social and political
institutions.
Of the white races which originally settled Virginia, by
far the most important in every respect was the English.
During the first century and a quarter of her history, the
immigration from other countries than England was not
large enough to have any perceptible influence on manners
or institutions. In the third, fourth, and fifth decades of
the eighteenth century, the Scotch-Irish and the Germans
made their settlements in the valley and in the adjacent
highlands. It is nowhere asserted that the Germans exerted
any particular influence except as the natural result of thrift
and good citizenship. For the Scotch-Irish much more is
claimed, and indisputably this vigorous and sturdy race has
been a factor of great potency in the life of Virginia and of
the entire South.
It is important to have in mind two facts concerning it.
In the first place, it has been numerically greatly over-
estimated. John Fiske, in an article published in Harper's
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THE SOUTH IS AMERICAN. 611
Magazine some years ago, declares that of the white popu-
lation of Virginia at the time of the seven years' war, all but
two per cent were English. In the second place, the Scotch-
Irish were late comers. When they arrived the colony was
already populous, and its institutions definitely and firmly
established. As non-conformists they were by circumstances,
as well as by their own inclination, kept apart, in some
measure, from their neighbors, and thus possessed the influ-
ence which union and concentration always secure. But
this could not prevent the natural results of incessant con-
tact with the far more numerous English, and practically
they were, in course of time, absorbed and assimilated.
If it had been otherwise, it would have made very little
difference. While the Scotch Irishman had one of the most
divergent and complicated genealogies in Europe, he was
principally Anglo-Saxon in blood, and had been for cen-
turies under English influences. For nearly two hundred
years his people had been subjects of the English crown.
And in this connection it may be further said that both the
Scotch and the Irish settlers of North America shared the
political beliefs of their English neighbors. The Anglo-
Saxon civilization was not the separate property of the race
from which it takes its name. The lowland Scotch and the
Irish were and are as much Anglo-Saxon in this respect as
the English themselves. In the war of the Revolution the
Scotch and the Irish patriots held the same opinions and
cherished the same purposes as the English, and fought for
them with no less courage and devotion.
The American Revolution implied no change of princi-
ples. If it resulted in institutional changes, the new insti-
tutions are essentially English in origin and in quality.
The establishment of the American republic was an advance
in the true line of Anglo-Saxon development, and no part of
the country has ever been so thoroughly Anglo-Saxon as the
South. Even Mr. Douglass Campbell, who has written an
ingenious polemical book to prove that everything good in
the North is of Dutch origin, stops with Pennsylvania, and
contents himself with saying that the South, which was not
under Dutch influence, contributed only one principle to the
commonwealth, and that a borrowed one.
But while the American colonists, more especially the
Southern ones, were men of the Anglo-Saxon race and
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612 THE ARENA.
had the Anglo-Saxon civilization, they were, at the time of
the Revolution, not Englishmen but Americans. No writer
has more satisfactorily presented this truth than Theodore
Roosevelt. It is true that Georgia had not long been
settled, but in most of the other colonies the white race had
lived for more than two centuries. In Virginia they had
dwelt for more than two hundred and fifty years.
Few Americans had ever seen England; the Atlantic was
not easily nor quickly crossed; not many could afford the
expenses of travel; the mixture of alien and sometimes
unfriendly blood, combined with distance and a free life
under new conditions, had moderated the sentiment of
loyalty to Britain, and had begotten habits and feelings
of independence. The people were not called English nor
treated as Englishmen, and they were distinctively and truly
American in feeling and in character. As the Anglo-Saxons
had absorbed and assimilated all other elements in all the
colonies, and as the absorption was more complete in the
Southern than in the Northern colonies, it followed natu-
rally that the development of the Southern states was wholly
along the lines of the old German-English civilization.
The Anglo-Saxon supremacy in the South has never been
overcome. So far as other white races are concerned, it has
never been threatened. The white population has always
been American and homogeneous. It will not be denied
that the younger, inland Southern states have derived their
population and institutions almost exclusively from the
Virginia group of colonies.
The third decade of this century witnessed the setting in
of that mighty tide of immigration which has "known no
retiring ebb." Immigration, however, has a tendency to fol-
low isothermal lines, a fact which makes Italian immigration
a menace to the South. Our immigrants have come mainly
from the north of Europe. This is not the only reason why
they have settled in the North and Northwest, but reasons
are less important for our present purpose than the fact that
the South has had almost no immigration. The increase of
population -has consequently been less than in other sections.
In some parts of the West we know that the foreigners pos-
sess the land, and do with it as they please. They control
politics, and cast down rulers and parties for such intolerable
offences against the rights of imported citizens as desiring to*
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THE SOUTH IS AMBEICAN. 613
have the English language taught in the public schools.
The pocket-borough politics of Nevada afford a striking
illustration of the benefits of foreign rule.
New York is more Jewish than Jerusalem ever was; more
German, probably, than any city except Berlin ; more Irish
than any except Dublin ; more Italian than any except
Naples. Chicago is American only in geography and in
politics. Of the fifteen million descendants of the Puritans,
Boston retains very few; and New England has been so
overrun by French Canadians that recently it was reported
that some of them had, in an outburst of Gallic enthusiasm,
proposed the establishment of a new Latin republic, with
Boston as its capital.
But statistics are more convincing than general statements.
In order to show how thoroughly American the population of
the Southern states is, I present the following statistics
taken fresh from our new census. I confine my attention to
the white population.
According to the census of 1890, there were for every
100,000 native-born Americans 17,330 foreign born. The
state of New York has in round numbers 4,400,000 native
and 1,600,000 foreign born citizens, being 35,000 foreign for
every 100,000 native. In Illinois for each 100,000 native-
born citizens there are 28,200 foreign born; in Michigan,
35,000; in Wisconsin, 44,400; in Minnesota, 56,600; in
Montana, 48,400; in North Dakota, 80,400.
When we turn to the Southern states, the contrast is im-
pressive. By Southern states, I mean Alabama, Arkansas,
Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North
Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and
West Virginia.
The white population of Tennessee is 1,336,000, and of
this number 20,029 are foreign born ; that is to say, for each
100,000 native-born whites there are 1,500 foreign born.
North Carolina is the most American of all the states, having
a native-born white population of 1,055,000, and foreign
born of 3,702, or for each 100,000 native born 370 foreign
born.
In the other Southern states the figures are as follows : —
NATIVE. FOREIGN.
Alabama 833,000 15,000
Arkansas 818,000 14,000
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614 THE AKENA.
XATIYE. FOREIGN.
Florida 225,000 22,000
Georgia 978,000 12,000
Kentucky 1,600,000 59,000
Mississippi 545,000 8,000
Louisiana 558,000 49,000
South Carolina 462,000 6,000
Texas 1,700,000 152,000
Virginia 1,000,000 18,000
West Virginia 730,000 18,000
I have omitted the odd hundreds ; and the total foreign-
born white population of the South, counting in these
hundreds, is about 380,000.
Massachusetts alone has a foreign-born population of
657,000; New Jersey, 329,000, or nearly as many as the
whole South ; New York, nearly 1,600,000, or four times as
many as the South ; Pennsylvania, 845,000 ; Ohio, 459,000,
or more than the entire South ; Illinois, 842,000 ; Michigan
and Wisconsin, each over 500,000; Minnesota, nearly 500,-
000; and California, 366,000.
If we omit Kentucky, Louisiana, and Texas, the little
state of Connecticut has 60,000 more foreigners than all the
remainder of the South; and wee Rhode Island, as large as
an average county, has within 14,000 as many foreigners as
the entire South, omitting the three states named.
But these figures do not indicate the real importance and
influence of the foreign-born population. One of the miti-
gated and highly qualified blessings which we enjoy is
universal suffrage. It is difficult to find one's consent to
suffrage limited in any way; but there is abundant justifica-
tion for dissenting from a system which converts a foreign
anarchist like John Most into an American citizen in a very
few years, honestly, and, on any political emergency, imme-
diately and dishonestly.
The proportion of adult men among immigrants is
much larger than in settled societies. For instance, of the
1,571,000 foreign-born citizens of New York, 1,084,000 are
voters (that is, of voting age); while of 4,000,000 native-
born citizens, only 1,769,000 are voters. In percentages the
foreign-born vote of New York is 38.73; Illinois, 36.39;
Michigan, 40.22; Wisconsin, 52.93; Minnesota, 58.55; North
Dakota, 64.89 ; Nevada, 51.41; California, 50.21.
These are foreign countries, and it is a positive relief to
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THE SOOTH IS AMERICAN. 615
turn to the South and feel that there are still some Ameri-
cans left. The percentage of foreign-born voters in some
of the Southern states is as follows: —
Tennessee, 3 per cent; Kentucky, 7; Alabama, 2.50;
Mississippi, 2; Louisiana, 10; Texas, 14; Arkansas, 3;
Virginia, 3; West Virginia, 5; North Carolina, 0.61; South
Carolina, 2; Florida, 11; Georgia, 2.
I have used the word " voters " to describe the class of
immigrants last referred to. It is not a fact, however, that
they all are voters; more than a million of them are aliens,
and thirty-two per cent of these foreign Americans cannot
speak the English language.
A comparison of census reports for I860, 1870, 1880, and
1890 shows that in none of the Southern states — except
Kentucky, with the large city of Louisville, Louisiana, with
the large city of New Orleans, and Texas, lying upon the
Mexican frontier — has there been any increase of foreign
population since 1860. We know that there was none
before that time. The white people of the South are almost
exclusively the descendants of the Americans of 1775.
Upon the other hand, it is safe to say that of the males of
voting age in the Northern and Northwestern states, not
less than fifty per cent are foreign born, or the sons of
foreign-born parents.
The white people of the South are not only American —
they are, in the main, the descendants of a race which from
the days of Tacitus has been known in the world's history
as the exemplar and champion of personal purity, personal
independence, and political liberty. For them no life but
one of freedom is possible, and I can never Wlieve that the
hybrid population of Russians, Poles, Italians, Hungarians,
which fills so many Northern cities and states, has the same
love for our country, the same love of liberty, as have the
Anglo-Saxon Southerners, whose fathers have always been
free.
The strongest, most concentrated force of Americanism is
in the South, and Americanism is the highest form of Anglo-
Saxon civilization. There is no part of the globe, except the
kingdom of England, which is so thoroughly Anglo-Saxon as
the South.
But it will be said, admitting that the South is American
and has preserved the Anglo-Saxon traits, nevertheless a
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616 THE ARENA.
war was necessary to keep her in the Union. To this
matter my own inclinations, no less than limitations of
space, require me to refer very briefly.
The excellence of the American Union is in the princi-
ples upon which it is established; that is to say, in the
Constitution. Surely no man will say that it is more
important to preserve the physical integrity of the Union
than the principles of the Constitution.
We claim for the South, in the war between the states,
absolute good faith. Whether she was right or wrong, the
impartial judgment of the future will fairly determine.
I affirm that the South has been, from the first, absolutely
faithful to the principles of the Constitution, as she in good
faith construed it. Let me indicate briefly the extent of her
participation in the formation of the Constitution and the
establishment of the republic. It is correctly said by a
Southern statesman that the Constitution was " adopted and
promulgated by a convention in which Southern influences
predominated." The heading of one of Bancroft's chapters
is, " Virginia Statesmen Lead towards a Better Union."
Virginia did lead the movement for the establishment of
the Constitution, and the reader who wishes to know the
extent of the influence of George Washington of Virginia in
this movement is referred to the pages of John Fiske of
New England. Rutledge and Pinckney of South Carolina
were the most important contributors to the form, as to the
substance, of the Constitution, with the exception of James
Madison of Virginia, who justly bears the name of " Father
of the Constitution." The Bill of Rights is mainly the
work of Thomas Jefferson.
During the first century of our national life, Southern
statesmen held the presidency and shaped the policy of the
government* They acquired Florida, and extended our
domain to trie Rio Grande and to the Pacific. The Consti-
tution was first construed by John Marshall of Virginia.
The school of strict constitutionists, which made a fetich of
the Constitution, was founded and supported by Southern
men. When the Southern Confederacy was formed, it
adopted as its organic law the old Constitution, unchanged
in any essential respect.
There is no fact nor logic which can prove that the South
ever deviated from her fealty to the Constitution, or ever
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THE SOUTH IS AMERIGAN. 617
shed a drop of blood except in defence of its principles as
she construed it.
The war construed the Constitution, and the South has in
good faith and unreservedly accepted every legitimate result
of the war. No man who is honest and who is adequately
informed will say that her people are not absolutely
loyal to the Union and the Constitution. I go further, and
affirm that in the troubles which the future is sure to bring,
the principles and the institutions of American liberty will
find their most loyal and steadfast support in the twelve
millions of Southern Anglo-Saxon Americans.
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A CONTINENTAL ISSUE.
BY RICHARD J. HINTON.
The new West is a region of aridity. It is one of sublime
scenery and almost weird picturesqueness. It is endowed
with climatic conditions everywhere helpful rather than
hindering to man. It holds great material capabilities. Its
mines of precious metals have within forty years revolution-
ized commerce and traffic. Its resources in the useful min-
erals are already beginning to astonish the investor. And
the bold announcement that with the use of water in irriga-
tion its lands may be made to support in plenty twenty
million families, or one hundred million persons, has struck
those who read and listen in order to understand and not
to sneer, with a bewildering sense of astonishment. But it
is true, and whatever concerns the shaping and making of
such results, is a matter of the weightiest import. Let me
prove this if I can.
The "arid region" of the United States embraces a huge
parallelogram of about one billion one hundred million acres.
It lies between the ninety-eighth and one hundred and
twenty-sixth degrees of longitude from east to west, and
between Manitoba and British Columbia on the north, and
the Rio Grande, the Gulf Coast, and the northern line of
Mexico on the south. The average precipitation is less than
eleven inches, ranging from three at Yuma in Arizona to
over twenty at Walla Walla or Yakima, in Washington, our
new edition of Pennsylvania. Everywhere, therefore, water
as a necessity of cultivation, or for security in ripening days,
must be artificially applied to the soil. Already from eight
to ten million acres are so cultivated, and about twelve mil-
lion more such acres are awaiting the arrival of settlers and
occupants. Within five years one hundred and fifty million
dollars of capital has actually been invested, and half as
much more has been contributed in lands and labor.
The total area "under ditch," that is, under works de-
signed to store and distribute water in irrigation, is not less
618
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A CONTINENTAL ISSUE. 619
than twenty-one million acres. There is the possibility of
reclaiming one hundred million more. These acres lie
almost wholly under constant sunshine. The surface waters
constantly convey millions of tons of fertilizing material to
the thirsty soils. Some authorities estimate the area of pos-
sible reclamation by means of water applied in irrigation at
two hundred and fifty million acres. I venture, however, to
express as a conviction on my part, that the conservation of
water for use is in the increase thereof, and that, therefore,
there may reasonably be anticipated a large addition to ser-
vice. In other words, the same amount of water necessary
for the reclamation to agriculture of one hundred and twenty-
five million acres, will, as the land fills up, serve an acreage
of one hundred and seventy-five million at least.
The financial equations involved in such an outlook are, I
know, of almost staggering amount, yet they may be esti-
mated in very simple totals. Taking the average cost per
acre at eight dollars, as figured out by the census authorities,
we should have for the total area one billion dollars. That
such a sum is no mere or wild guess can be shown by the
expense of the costly works erected by the British engineers
in India during the past forty years. The cost for eighteen
million acres is resolved readily at nine dollars per acre.
And the British Indian works, as a whole, are much more
costly than those which we will construct in arid America.
The expenditure of such a sum as I state will be found
profitable, when governed by time, demand, and the other
conditions that must enter in; for the land reclaimed can
readily be made worth, by the creation of irrigation works,
from twenty-five dollars to fifty dollars per acre. The aver-
age market value, to-day, with but few buyers, will be
not over two dollars per acre. And this great increase of
land value will be accompanied by the actual creation of new
wealth, in the industrial use of water now lost and wasted,
to the amount of not less than another billion of dollars.
That is to say, water, as an agent in agriculture, will cer-
tainly be worth ten dollars per cubic foot when delivered per
second of time to the land. Engineers and experts will
assure all doubters that this estimate is ridiculously low.
The land to be thus reclaimed from aridity will everywhere
return in products, crops equal in quality to any grown in
the humid areas, and in quantity at least four-fold greater.
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620 THE ARENA.
All of the work involved in such great estimates may be
achieved at the cost, in large degree, of those who are to be
the beneficiaries. In other words, the reclamation of our
arid region need not partake of a national eleemosynary char-
acter. There are certain positive and distinct requirements
demanded in national and state legislation to render success-
ful and safe this vast addition to the wealth of America and
the world.
I am apt to assert that, broadly stated, there are but two
syllogisms needed to express the roads along which poverty-
may be abolished. These are: — 1. Increase the wealth of
the world by all just methods. 2. See to it that all who aid
therein receive their equitable share of whatsoever wealth is
developed. In considering the problems of irrigation in our
arid region, I have all the time had in view the processes of
equity in distribution as well as those of creation, construc-
tion, development, and administration. I am writing now
to assert in all soberness that this pending development of
our continental resources can be, nay, must be, effected upon
lines which will automatically develop economic equity in
distribution, and that, too, in a degree and with a security
never yet dreamed of, except by the prophets and publicists
of the social philosophies that are now derided.
It is my purpose briefly and in outline at least to establish
this, and at the same time show how it may be brought about
— how, indeed, it is even now coming about.
Again, the issues here presented are of present importance.
When this article goes forth in the current issue of The
Arena, an international convention to consider them will
meet at Los Angeles, Cal.,* and its policy, formulated in
demands, will soon thereafter be heard upon the floor of
Congress.
Given, then, the wealth-creating possibility already indi-
cated, and it will be desirable to show the connection of
legislation and other public action with the same. Three
propositions come to me as generally expressive of that
association : —
1. The disposition of our public lands.
2. The nature and character of water control that must be
established.
3. The form of ownership, supervision, and administration of the
water and works necessary for irrigation uses.
• Oct. 10, International Irrigation Congress.
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A CONTINENTAL ISSUE. 621
These cover the whole problem, and their statement indi-
cates a logical order of discussion, to which I will proceed: —
Our public domain is now confined, with the exception of
about twenty-five million acres, to the region indicated as
arid in character. There is available for occupancy west of
the ninety-eighth meridian of longitude about five hundred
and forty million acres. . There is of the public domain also,
but not open to settlement, at least one hundred and twenty
million acres more, now reserved as Indian lands, for military
posts, and as unsettled Spanish grants. It is more than
probable that five sixths of this area will ere many years be
added to the public lands open to settlement. The state of
Texas still holds at least eighty million acres of her state
domain, nearly all of which lies west of ninety-eight. To
recapitulate, there are, out of the one billion one hundred
million acres embraced within the arid region, the following
bodies of public and other lands : —
AOBB8.
Open to settlement, public lands U. S 640,000,000
" " public lands of Texas 80,000,000
" " • by purchase, railroad lands . . . 75,000,000
Total for present and prospective settlement . . 695,000,000
Public lands that may yet be opened (Indian, military,
and Spanish grants) 120,000,000
815,000,000
Of the remaining two hundred and eighty-five million
acres, water surfaces may take about one sixth, and of the
balance, about fifty million acres are under use and develop-
ment for cattle, agriculture, mining, and lumbering. The
remainder is under private ownership for use or sale. The
issue in this brief paper concerns itself tnost materially with
the public lands open for settlement. These are, in the
right solution of problems involved, more valuable to the
interests. that irrigation is creating than for anything else.
They embrace the water-bearing lands. By that I mean
the chief sources of water supply — the heads of all the
interstate streams and courses, as well as the lakes, large
and small, which exist in the Rockies and higher Sierras.
The second factor of importance is the forest land remain-
ing, and the third, but not the least, are the pastoral areas
embraced. The choicest and most available portions of
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622 THE ABENA.
the unoccupied arid region will be found, probably, in the
areas owned by corporations and individuals, or those which
are retained at present as Indian or other reservations. If
there were water sufficient for cultivation, the public lands
now open for settlement would afford one acre in five for
arable use. The area of probable reclamation will hardly
exceed one acre in ten, unless that systematic conservation of
water suppty which the future holds, shall enable consider-
able grain and root cultivation to be undertaken in connec-
tion with pastoral occupancy of the higher altitude table-
lands, such as large segments of the Colorado and Raton
plateaus, the ranges in the basin region, in Wyoming, Mon-
tana, and the coast Sierras.
The principal question now being raised in relation to
reclamation by irrigation, and the national policy that should
be pursued, relates directly to the permanent disposal of
the remaining public domain. The first Irrigation Con-
gress met in Salt Lake City in September, 1891, and as the
sole result of its action put forth a demand for the transfer
of that domain to the several commonwealths now or here-
after formed in the arid region. The proceeds of such
transfer would thereby be used, it was claimed, for the
advancement of reclamation by the storage and distribution
of water. This demand for such transfer has been vigor-
ously pursued. Mr. Warren, United States senator for
Wyoming, presented a bill and advocated the same in the
Senate. The discussion, so far as any has occurred, has
been conducted mainly by an able and interesting specialist
periodical, then published at Salt Lake City.
The most remarkable feature of the plan pursued has,
however, been a "conspiracy of silence," which was most
effectively illustrated by the committees of House and
Senate in the Fiftynsecond Congress, that were charged with
inquiry into the whole subject. The House Committee
practically boycotted every one who did not believe in the
transfer policy. The majority were indifferent to the matter,
and the chairman, a Texas congressman, would allow no
hearings whatever. Any information he got was sought
privately, and only on one side. The Senate Committee
acted in a similar manner, though less offensively, as its
chairman was in character and manner more urbane and
kindly. The fact became apparent and is still so, that the
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A CONTINENTAL ISSUE. 623
last thing the chief advocates of public land transfer desire
is a discussion in Congress and the press commensurate with
the great importance of the questions and interests embraced.
I do not know if the same course will be pursued at Los
Angeles, but that the attempt will be made may be fully
anticipated. There is a decided tendency within the present
•administration and the party press by which it is sustained,
to favor the proposed transfer. In great part this view is
taken at haphazard and without due consideration. It
appears to be probably the easiest way of getting rid of
vexatious questions, and the magic words "state control"
fit in with their traditional feelings and views.
I am of those who are strongly opposed to the transfer
policy, and who do not believe that its realization will be
well for the states immediately involved or be for the best
interests of all the people. My chief reason relates itself to
the larger social-economic phases and appeals to the near
future for its support of equity, order, and security. There
are questions involved, such as relate to the capability of
these young states to frame land control systems and to
bear the burden of surveys, etc., as well as the dangerous
incentive to corporate and real estate lobbying and corrupt-
ing that must inevitably follow such loose legislation as has
been proposed; the probability of creating ill-advised irriga-
tion " booms," that would almost inevitably accompany such
a gift; the difficulty of preventing clashing and conflicts
between the states over boundaries and water flow, etc., and
the inability that would follow of appealing to the federal
authority and courts to solve the questions at stake. I leave
these detailed objections for another place. It is quite prac-
ticable to accomplish all the good that many advocates of
transfer anticipate therefrom, by a retention of control in
the hands of the general government and a judicious appli-
cation of the lands and their proceeds to the encouragement
of reclamation by irrigation.
But to my mind there is one insuperable objection to the
proposed wholesale transfer of our public domain from
nation to states, which rests upon the largest physical facts,
is rooted in the greater hydrological and climatic conditions
of the continent, and whose consideration belongs to the
higher statesmanship that must govern rather than to the
managing policies and purposes which are looking to imme-
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624 THE ABENA.
diate relief from labor or impinging profit to community and
person. To that objection, then, I address myself, and in
doing so reach the second of the divisions already outlined.
The water supply is, of course, the first and most important
of all questions in any region where irrigation is necessary
to make agriculture possible. Land under aridity is of very
slight industrial value; water when applied thereto is the
solvent that, with labor, creates values. Water can never be
private property. The carrying and placing of it will be,
while controlled by private enterprise. The essence of prop-
erty in legal terms is found in identity and place, neither of
which inures to that element. Water is natural wealth, just
as the air is the necessary condition of all life. These pri-
mary truths must be borne in mind when dealing with my
subject. The farmer who needs water pays for the con-
veniences by which it is stored and conveyed to him. And
water is a natural agent, essential to use of land ; it must,
wherever its presence is an absolute necessity, inure to the
land to which it has once been conveyed. These are factors
laid down in all the judicial decisions made by courts
familiar with the practices and requirements of an irrigated
country. In one form or another they are found in the cus-
toms, rules, regulations, laws, decisions, and practices of all
such communities and countries, from the dawn of recorded
history up to the present date.
From these general statements it follows, to me at least,
that the burden of making the land valuable must in the
main be borne by those who are to derive the profit thereof,
but under such conditions of public supervision as the expe-
riences of mankind may deem necessary to prevent hurtful
monopoly and continued struggle. The sovereignty of the
whole must be exercised in law and regulation to compel
the parts, local and individual, to obey the requirement of
paying for service, and of also maintaining common control
*for common benefit.
At this point in my plea I interpose the statement that
the transfer of the public lands will render these desirable
things practically impossible. And my main statement in
support of that position is that the transfer of interstate
water sources, etc., to state control, will interpose barriers
that must produce collision and bring about conflicts.
Take down a map of the United States and examine the
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A CONTINENTAL ISSUE. 625
hydrography of the region reviewed. Nearly all of the greater
rivers rise within or are close to the limits of this region.
The Mississippi is just outside, and its great basin is almost
its eastern boundary line. It is seriously affected by the
climate and topography which make aridity the rule in the
west. The Missouri and all its main confluents rise in
the northern and central sections of the Rockies. The Rio
Grande rises and flows for twelve hundred miles wholly
within the mid-mountain areas thereof. The Rio Colorado,
emptying into the Gulf of California, drains, with its great
tributaries — the Wind, Green, Grand, Gunnison, San Juan,
and others — the basin region and southwest, for at least nine
hundred miles. The Rio Gila rises in New Mexico and
bisects Arizona from east to west. The principal sources of
the majestic Columbia rise on the northwest slopes of the
Rockies and pass through two states with large arid and
semi-arid sections. The interior rivers of the northwest —
the Snake, Salmon, Bear, Owyhee, etc. — are all interstate
in character. Engineering knowledge and expert testimony
will prove that there is sufficient water, in all these streams,
when properly managed and conserved, to insure the recla-
mation of the one hundred and twenty-five million acres
to which this paper limits the area of probable use. And
the control of this great source of wealth means not alone
vast power but enormous profit.
Returning again to our map, the observer will find that
nearly all of the water courses I have referred to — the
sources from which must spring this great wealth and its
new civilization — have their rise within and from three
states alone — Colorado, Wyoming, Montana. Beginning
with the one first named, it will be seen that the front
range of the Rockies therein holds the sources of the
Arkansas and the South Platte. On its eastern area rise
the mid-plain waters of the Republican and Smoky Hill —
all waters the control of which must affect the welfare of a
half-dozen states. In its central basin on the south, Colo-
rado possesses the sources of the Rio Grande. On the west
it has a half-dozen feeders of the Rio Colorado. Then comes
Wyoming, with its most important hydrographical conditions,
possessing on its eastern lines the North Platte, Niobrara,
Loup, and a part of the Yellowstone's affluents. On the
west and north it holds the sources of the Wind, Green,
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626 THE ARENA.
Snake, Bear, and tfther streams. The many mountain lakes,
large and small, that Wyoming contains, do not enter into
this branch of our subject, as they are state waters. Montana
holds on the east all the sources of the Upper Missouri as
well as of the Milk River, a large tributary of the Upper
Mississippi. On the west it contains the American sources
of the Columbia, and some of the 'tributaries of the Snake
and Salmon Rivers.
Outside of these three states we have of interstate waters
only the Pecos, Canadian, and Gila, taking their rise in New
Mexico, and flowing therefrom into Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas,
and Arizona. In California and Nevada we have the inter-
state Lake Tahoe, and the Klamath River, rising in Oregon.
With that the tale is completed. California has its own
system confined to its own borders, in the San Joaquin and
Sacramento Rivers ; also the small streams, now so valuable,
in the southern section.
My objection, then, is the large one, that, by the wholesale
transfer of the public domain to the arid states, the chief
water supply thereof will, to all intents and purposes, pass
under the direct sovereignty of the three states named. It
may be objected here that they now have legal control of the
same by reason of the constitutional provisions each has
adopted, placing the natural waters there under the control
of the states themselves. To that I reply that they can
have no final sovereignty over interstate water sources,
while that remains in the hands of the general government
as part of the public domain. The national sovereignty
will remain an administrative issue alone, and may not
involve constitutional conflict, as will certainly be the case
when such proposed transfer shall be accomplished. The
prize of power and the profit of control will be too great a
temptation for the clever operators and promoters east and
west, who will flock for spoils to this inviting field. Can
the people of the remaining states interested submit unques-
tioningly to such possibilities as are indicated? Let me
suggest one in which the whole country is enormously
involved.
The overdrainage of the northwest enormously increases
the flood dangers of the alluvial Mississippi. That drainage
lies largely within Montana and North Dakota. At no dis-
tant day, as a national issue, the storage of water alone in the
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A CONTINENTAL ISSUE. 627
Upper Missouri region will rise into one of vast importance.
It will involve alike the reclamation of that northwest and
the protection from overflow of the still richer central south.
It is essential, then, to maintain control by ownership of all
these interstate water sources. I venture the assertion that
there will be a sudden lessening of interest in the land transfer
policy, if any such action shall be coupled with the impera-
tive and permanent preservation to the nation as forest and
water storage reservations of all the public lands in which
such waters rise. A considerable step has already been
quietly achieved in this direction by the forest reserves that
have been made during the past three years. My proposi-
tions would then be : —
(a) The permanent creation of national reservations, to
include in all cases the sources of interstate waters.
(6) The granting in trust to the several states of all state
water sources, for storage purposes, which still remain part
of the public domain.
(<?) The limited (in . time) reservation of all pastoral
lands above a certain altitude, which may be defined by com-
missioners appointed for the purpose; the same not to be
sold but leased for range purposes; the proceeds of leases,
above all costs of administration, to be used for the finding
and development of water supply therein. These to be
public property, under local regulation and state supervision.
(d) The opening of all arable lands requiring irrigation
to homestead settlement only, the same to be sold to the
settlers at small prices, varying slightly according to the
uses to which such land may be put ; as, roots, grain, and
grass in one class; fruits in another; special crops, like sugar
beets for example, in another. The net proceeds of all such
homestead sales should be kept as a separate trust fund to
be divided among the several states interested and to be used
by them for storage works or as guarantee for interest on
district or other authorized irrigation bonds, and all profits
arising to the states from the use of such moneys to be turned
over to the school funds, under such laws as the states may
frame and pass. The same disposition should be made of all
grants of public lands given for irrigation purposes, and I
believe that it will be wise policy for Congress to be liberal
in this direction, especially so to all genuine co-operative
land settlement enterprises.
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628 THE AEEKA.
My objection, then, to the land transfer policy is that it is
in immediate results speculative and wasteful in character;
that it is not just to all the people; that it will breed inter-
state conflicts and so hinder the normal and higher progress
of the new agriculture, and that it is not administratively in
unison with the controlling facts of topography and hydrog-
raphy. As I believe that the normal progress of the new
life of the West is to be found in local ownership of water
and works, under state regulation and so much of national
aid as I have indicated, with the addition of such just
expenditures as will enable us to understand the value and
capacities of our common property, the public domain, I
am not in favor of a policy which will put the whole future
at the mercy of the "boomers" and the sanguine, who
demand immediate results, hardly caring how they are
obtained.
My third division relates, therefore, to the shaping of
legislation by which, through district municipal organization,
the people will pay capital in the way of bonds and interest,
for all the aid it can give, while at the same retaining
this great agency of industrial life and wealth within its
own hands. The California irrigation district system already
outlines in general form the system I am contemplating.
The states of Washington, Oregon, Kansas, and South
Dakota have in more or less modified form adopted the
California or Wright plan ; while Colorado, Wyoming,
and Nevada have in part adopted the plan of judicial and
administrative supervision of water appropriation and dis-
tribution. The commingling of these two will come when a
working basis is found. Analysis and deduction will show
that this general plan must automatically tend, more and
more, to equity in the distribution of economic results. It
will ensure payment and security for the capital involved ;
it must also make permanent the common control of the
sources of irrigation wealth and the success thereby of all
who work and direct. Action along these general lines will
produce for our irrigation empire conditions that I cannot
describe better than in the words I have used elsewhere and
on other occasions : —
"Irrigation means new and better economic conditions.
It means small farms, orchards, and vineyards, more homes
and families, with moderate means and greater comfort. It
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A CONTINENTAL ISSUE. 629
means more intelligence and knowledge applied to farming;
more profit from crops, more freight, and more commerce,
because special products of higher grade and better market
value will be raised. It means association in town life
instead of isolated farms; it means the occupation for small
ranches of every mountain basin and valley, and the gradual
but still rapid filling up of foot-hills and table-lands. It
means telephones, telegraphs, good roads, and swift motors;
fruit and garden growths everywhere; schools in close prox-
imity, villages on every hand, and such general prosperity as
can hardly be dreamed of by any one individual. To achieve
it more readily, intellectual understanding, business direction,
and scientific organization should be given to the great
movement now coming to the front for the development of
enterprise and progress."
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A FKEE CHURCH FOR AMERICA.
BY WILLIAM P. MCKENZIE.
It is an age of brotherhoods and fraternal associations,
and some, therefore, may object to the name "church."
Let the church be considered the complement of the state.
The state administers justice, the church benevolence. By
the state the murderer is hanged; by the church the widow
and orphans of both the hanged murderer and his slain vic-
tim are cared for — their hunger the state does not consider.
The representatives of citizens regulate commerce and traffic,
the things which concern gain and ownership; these same
citizens in church relations have representatives who attend
to matters of gift and kindness. The state builds a post
office, the church a hospital. In the state a man's duties are
legal; he must be just. In the church it is his duty to be
helpful; he must be sympathetic. Religionists try to be
generous before being just, and thereby is explained the
hatred of the masses for churches.
Can we have a church that in the way indicated will com-
plement a free state? So long as the denominations are
rivals, there cannot be a free church; but if foreigners in
this land recognize that they are called into liberty, why
should not those speaking the variant tongues of religion be
also drawn to the freedom of love ? In America there is
neither Swede nor Norwegian, German, Russian, nor Pole, but
all are one — even the old language forgotten in a few gen-
erations. Why, then, should we have distinctions preserved
in the church — old-world distinctions at that, Lutheran,
Anglican, Wesleyan, Dutch Reformed ? Is it harder to give
up a religious phraseology than a mother-tongue ?
Union, or rather fellowship, in work characterizes this
age. Poets have dreamed of such hand-clasping of comrades
as will be this year; prophets have had visions of this era of
friendship. Materialists have compressed a sneer into the
word " visionary " ; but this idea of a world-friendship, " Is
it a dream? Nay, but the lack of it a dream."
What binders union of men in a free church? Two e>]4
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A FBEE CHUECH FOB AMERICA. 631
enemies, officialism and superstition. To that Greatheart,
Dr. Hale, some ecclesiasts object : he has no creed. To that
Boanerges, Dr. Parkhurst, others object: he has not been prop-
erly ordained. Of that "beloved disciple," Phillips Brooks,
some were ready to say he was not baptized — in sufficient
measure. To be associated with good men in good work is,
according to the straitest sects, to tolerate the errors of these
good men.
To this materialism of the teachers corresponds the super-
stition of the people. Some can imagine the Judge examin-
ing a soul to find the "watermark"; some are satisfied there
is no salvation for one not " confirmed " by a bishop ; some
tremble regarding their own safety if for a moment they are
brought to doubt the hopeless " damnation " of the mass of
mankind; some are sure a man is not "converted" unless he
can locate the year, day of the month, and hour, and tell
whether it was a snowy day or not.
One illustration of the official idea will be enough. A
society began to work and increase under the name of Chris-
tian Endeavor. The word chosen signified that the members
wished to do their devoir, or duty, as Christians — which is
undoubtedly obedience to the last command of Christ. That
love by Him enjoined, brought the young people of different
denominations into sympathy. It seemed as if the coming
generation was to realize what Christ so longed to see —
" one flock and one shepherd." But the hireling shepherds
took alarm. A portion of the flock was driven off into the
strong- walled Westminster fold; a section turned from the
plain into the secluded Baptist river- valley; a large section
protected by barbed fencing in the Epworth pasture. Ex-
clusiveness was supposed to insure safety.
But open-heartedness and brotherly kindness must take
the place of exclusiveness if we are to have a free church.
The church will be home for the friendless and school for the
ignorant; a place, also, for those who want not help but sym-
pathy, the love that "restores the intuition" to the discour-
aged. Will be, we have said; is it so yet? Is there a church
not based on creed, but aiming simply to manifest the
spirit Christ asked for in his parable of the last judgment ?
Is there one united by a sentiment thus ?
It is because thinking and not doing is emphasized in
church associations that members feel responsible for what
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632 THE ARENA.
another thinks. He may be never so kindly in spirit, so
flawless in character, so useful in life; there is a petulant
earnestness to cast him out if his views happen to be more
spiritual than the majority can understand. Only one class
did Jesus denounce and warn — those who will allow no such
thing as a free church; those who strain at a gnat and
swallow a camel; who scent heresy with the delight of a
young hound on his first trail, finding in the hunt that " to
do justice " involves too much delay, and that " to love
mercy" is sentimental, while as for "walking humbly before
God," they decide what He ought to believe.
Only for such as have been converted and "become as
little children " has a free church room, but it has room for
all of these. It may well have many divisions; it will have
but the one work — the regeneration of humanity.
At Pittsburgh, in the " east end," has been given a
practical example of union in work; twenty churches ac-
knowledging that they are comrades, as soldiers in a war ;
making actually a " war-map " of the district, and assigning
to each corps of laborers a part; a Presbyterian minister and
a Roman Catholic priest working shoulder to shoulder as the
captains of salvation for one division or parish.
In the sixteenth century there was the disruption of
Christendom ; let us hope that even in this century we are
to see the reunion of Christendom. Seers have looked to
America as the meeting ground for men, the place where
brotherhood is to be recognized. Not until men put hatred
out of their hearts, and add to what they have considered
"godliness," brotherly kindness, will the Fatherhood of God
be truly known. Perhaps thus, in this free land, will be
realized the vision of the poet of democracy: —
And thou, America . . . not for thyself thou hast arrived.
The measured faiths of other lands, the grandeurs of the past,
Are not for thee, but grandeurs of thine own,
Deific faiths and amplitudes, absorbing, comprehending all,
All eligible to all.
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GEOKGE WENTWORTH.
BY J. S. KINO, M. D.
" Landlord, I believe that this is just the place that I have
been looking for. During the past week I have visited your
large manufactories, have noted your numerous fine churches and
schoolhouses, and the live business that is going on; these,
together with your eleven railroads, centring here from every
point of the compass, the beautiful and romantic scenery in and
about your city, indicate that there is a great future in store for
you, and make this a desirable place in which to locate. If I can
find suitable employment I will make this my home."
The above was addressed to Mr. Stockweil, the proprietor of
the Jefferson Hotel, at Decatur, 111., by George Wentworth, of
New Haven, Conn. Six weeks previous to this he had left his
home to seek a new one in the West. He had visited quite a
number of cities and larger towns in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois,
but had not found any that suited him until arriving at Decatur.
His father had been for a number of years the proprietor of one
of the largest hotels in New Haven, but had recently sold out
and retired to a suburban residence, whereupon the son decided
to go elsewhere.
After inquiring in regard to Mr. Wentworth's experience, and
an examination of his letters of recommendation, Mr. Stockweil
engaged him as day clerk, to commence in ten days, at which
time the old clerk was going to take charge of a hotel in an
adjoining place.
Mr. Wentworth proved to be a very efficient person ; he made
many friends in the city and with the travelling public. He was
a gentleman of fine accomplishments, a graduate of Harvard, a
good musician, and last, though not least, in the estimation of
some, the young ladies pronounced him handsome. He united
by letter with the First Methodist church, and became teacher of
a class of young ladies in the Sunday school.
Some months had passed when an evangelist came to hold a
revival in the Second Methodist church. Most so-called, or, more
properly speaking, self-styled, evangelists have a hobby which
they ride to the detriment, and sometimes to the death, of true
religion; this one had — the second blessing, or sanctification.
633
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634 THE ARENA.
He secured quite a number of followers, among the most earnest
of whom was George Went worth. It was thought by some that
he was over zealous, but as it seemed only to increase his devo-
tion to the church and religious works, none could find fault or
complain.
II.
Among the many beautiful and picturesque residences of
Decatur, none excelled and but few equalled that of Mrs. L. A.
Gastrell. Her husband had been one of the prosperous mer-
chants of the city. At his death, which occurred some ten years
previous to this time, his widow was left in very comfortable
circumstances, some said wealthy.
Her only child, Lucile, was a handsome and accomplished
young lady of twenty. There was but one thing that marred
her happiness — she had a peculiar derangement, or more prop-
erly speaking, condition, of the nervous system which subjected
her to many unpleasant scenes. It did not affect her health and
but few even of the relatives knew of its existence. The old
family physician, Dr. McPheeters, had advised both mother and
daughter to keep it a secret. He also gave them good reasons to
believe that it would be removed in a few years by proper treat-
ment and care. Recently he had advised, as one remedy, a resi-
dence of a year or more in California ; it was the discussion of
this subject that kept them at home on the evening that this
chapter opens. Mrs. Gastrell desired to start in a few weeks^
Lucile did not think that it was necessary for them to go, as her
" spells," as she termed them, had been less frequent during the
past year than ever before, hence it was probable that she would
soon be entirely relieved of them.
" Then, mother, you know how anxious George is to have me
name an early day for our marriage ; it would break his heart to
be separated from me a whole year."
"As to that, my daughter, you need not give yourself any
uneasiness — young men's hearts are very pliable, as they will
bend around a number of love affairs without a break or even a
twinge. That the time of your marriage should be postponed
indefinitely is one of the principal reasons why the doctor urges
this trip, and if Mr. Wentworth truly loves you, he will gladly
assent to the separation, as it will be for your ultimate happiness
and good health. Then, Lucile, you must remember that we
really know but little of Mr. Wentworth ; it is only about fifteen
months since he came to our city." While Mrs. Gastrell was
talking the daughter was walking in an excited manner. Sud-
denly stopping, she exclaimed : —
« Mother, I have always been an obedient child, and would be
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GEORGE WENTWORTH. 635
so now, did I not feel certain that you are acting entirely under
the advice of that crusty old bachelor, Dr. McPheeters, who has
prescribed this California trip simply to separate me from my
loved one. You, as an old-school Presbyterian, never could
understand George and his peculiar beliefs, as you term them;
the doctor, although a good Christian and an old-time Methodist,
claims that there is something radically wrong with any one who
professes complete sanctifi cation. He told me not many months
ago that he always watched such persons closely, as they, as a
rule, were either arrogant hypocrites, or else were afflicted with
a mental degeneration, generally of that form known to the
medical profession as circular or alternating insanity, in which
the fundamental note of character is an intense and narrow self-
regarding egotism. He said that there were no doubt exceptions
to this rule, but that they were rare indeed. In such persons, as
in all cases where the brain is in any degree diseased, emotional
or volitional insanity may suddenly develop, and lead them, under
the impulse of an exciting motive, to commit some terrible crime.
He advised me for these reasons to wait several years until
George had regained his sanity, developed into a maniac, or else
had thrown off the assumed religious cloak and exposed the
cloven foot ; should either of the latter things occur, I would be
glad that I had waited ; should it be the first, I would be happy
indeed. I was indignant to think that the doctor would talk so
to me, and told him that I believed that he had elaborated this
theory simply to keep me from marrying George. I have great
respect for Dr. McPheeters as a medical adviser on strictly pro-
fessional subjects, but when he wanders into Cupid's domains he
is meddling with something that is wholly unintelligible to him,
and that which is none of his business. He has never liked
George, and largely to his influence do I attribute your prejudice
against him. Unless I change my mind there will be no trip
to California for me, except as Mrs. Wentworth, accompanied by
my husband."
Mrs. Gastrell was surprised and shocked at this, the first
evidence of insubordination in her daughter. A further discus-
sion of the subject was postponed indefinitely.
The next evening when George called, Lucile told him what
had transpired between mother and daughter. He was greatly
grieved, but said, u Your duty is to obey your mother ; as much
as I desire to claim you as my own in a short time, and as hard
as it will be for me to be separated from you, yet 1 would not
have you go contrary to the wishes and advice of your mother ;
a year will soon roll around, and then no doubt your mother will
be willing to give you to me, as I shall endeavor to make myself
every way worthy of such a prize,"
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636 THE AKENA.
A fe*w weeks after this, Mrs. Gastrell and her daughter started
for California.
III.
On the morning of April 18, 18 — , the citizens of Decatur
were startled by the announcement that the safe in the store of
Pollock and Mason had been robbed during the night of a large
quantity of money and of jewelry, including some valuable dia-
monds, placed there for safe keeping by members of the family
and friends. When Mr. Pollock went to the store at about nine
o'clock, he was surprised to learn that his private secretary and
confidential bookkeeper, Samuel Sylvester, had not yet arrived ;
he was always promptly at the desk by eight. As he and Mr.
Pollock were the only ones who knew the combination of the
lock, the assistant bookkeeper had not been able to do anything.
On opening the safe Mr. Pollock discovered that everything val-
uable had been removed. Suspicion at once rested upon Mr.
Sylvester. The sheriff went to his room at the Jefferson Hotel,
and found him in bed asleep ; on being awakened and told that
he was a prisoner, he seemed confused and surprised, but stoutly
maintained that he knew nothing whatever of the robbery.
In the preliminary trial, which took place immediately before
'Squire Parsons, the merchant policeman said that as he passed
Pollock and Mason's &*tore on North Water Street, about 1
o'clock a. m., he saw Mr. Sylvester enter the store. He recog-
nized him by a new brown spring overcoat that he had seen him
wearing during the past few days, with a hat to match. He did
not speak to him, as it was not unusual for Mr. Sylvester to enter
the store at any time of the night. One of the regular city police
testified that he saw Mr. Sylvester on Merchant Street about 2
o'clock a. m. He had on his new brown spring overcoat, with a
hat of the same color. He was going towards the Jefferson
Hotel. Some other damaging testimony was introduced, which,
together with his absence from the store in the morning and his
confused action when arrested, pointed to him as the guilty party.
The bail was placed at two thousand dollars. His employers,
being convinced of his guilt, refused to go on the bond. This
deterred others, and it seemed that he would have to lie in jail to
await the action of the grand jury. Mr. Wentworth requested
the officer who had charge of the prisoner to hold him for an
hour while he tried to procure bail. He went to Pollock and
Mason and urged them to go on the bond, saying that he did not
believe that Mr. Sylvester was guilty, damaging as the evidence
seemed to be. They refused. He then said that he had a thou-
sand dollars in bank which he would secure to them for one half
of the bail if they would go on the bond for the other half } to
this they reluctantly consented.
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GEOBGE WENTWOBTH. 637
Mr. Sylvester, on being admitted to bail, said : " I am aware
that the evidence is strongly against me, and that unless by some
means we can find the guilty one, I shall have to suffer ; but as
God exists, I am perfectly innocent of the crime. I cannot ac-
count for the opening of the safe, except upon the ground that
some professional safe-breaker has been in the city, and found
the combination as experts can. But it seems strange that he
should have had an overcoat and hat like mine. I went to bed
at 10 o'clock p. m., and did not awaken until aroused by the
officers."
IV.
"Good morning, Dr. McPheeters. I called to talk to you
about my cousin, Lucile Gastrell. She writes me that she is very
anxious to return home, and requested me to see you, as her
mother will not consent to it except on your advice."
" Mr. Donaldson, I hardly think that it would be best for them
to return now ; it is but six months since they left home, not
time enough to make any perceptible change in her condition.
This trip is an experimental one. We hope that an entire change
of scenery, climate, and social environments will produce the
reaction in the nerve centres necessary to relieve Lucile of her
unpleasant trance scenes. I could not advise less than a year's
absence, — perhaps more time would be better still."
"Doctor, will you please enlighten me as to my cousin's
peculiar trouble? She passes into her abnormal states, as you
term them, while apparently wide awake, and when in that con-
dition sees and hears things transpiring at far distant places. It
is a mystery that I cannot comprehend."
"As to its being mysterious, it is no more so to you,
Mr. Donaldson, than to the most learned metaphysician. The
attempts of scientific men to formulate laws regarding this and
allied conditions of the mind, have been productive of but small
results. The more we attempt to fathom the depths of the
mental or soul life, the more fully are we convinced that it is
beyond our comprehension, and that, like Socrates, we can but
say, 'The only thing that we know to a certainty is our own
ignorance.' The rude, ignorant pretender often claims to know
all about the laws that govern these strange phenomena, but the
educated and experienced philosopher knows that he understands
nothing. We are told in our standard works on mental philoso-
phy that some law not known to us may exist, by virtue of
which the nervous system may become susceptible of impressions
not ordinarily received, and put in communication, in some mys-
terious way, with scenes, places, and events far distant — an
inner consciousness, a hidden soul life, not dependent on the
bodily organization, which at times comes forth into development,
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638 THE ARENA.
and manifests itself when the usual relations of body and soul are
disturbed or suspended.
"That the mind has a distinct nature and a distinct reality
from the body, is evident to every student of mental philosophy.
One among the many marked manifestations of this, is in persons
like your cousin Lucile. Why this condition is absent in most
persons, and so marked in others, we cannot attempt to explain ;
but we know that between these extremes there is every grada-
tion, from the slight impression of some pending evil or good
thing happening to dear friends at a distance, to the vivid reality
as witnessed by your cousin when in this dual state.
"Again, this is sometimes manifested in dreams; for while
most dreams are but the result of some morbid derangement of
the body or brain, yet they occasionally become the medium
through which we are put in communication with persons and
places far away. Further, there are many cases recorded in our
standard scientific works where dreams have been prophetic.
Abercrombie in his * Treatise on Mental Philosophy ' says, « A class
of dreams which present an interesting subject of observation
are those, many of them well authenticated, in which a dream has
given notice of an event which was occurring at the time, or
which was soon to occur.' Again, in somnambulism, which is but
an acted dream, how the subject can read, write, or run through
dark and intricate places without the aid of sight is not apparent,
but it is done. It shows that our ordinary way of perceiving
things is not the only way ; that special organs of vision are not
needed in order to all perceptions.
" These and many other well-established facts in regard to our
immaterial organization, prove beyond a doubt that the 6oul can
and does have a distinct and separate existence in this life, as
well as in the life to come. This subject has not been studied
much by the people at large, as ignorant impostors and travelling
lecturers have brought it somewhat into disrepute by their
erroneous pretensions of being able to use it as suited their
purpose to extract money from an easily humbugged public.
But you can see, Mr. Donaldson, that your cousin is a living
illustration of these mysterious laws ; we have many similar and
equally well-marked cases recorded by our most reliable and
eminent metaphysicians. But here comes the mail — wait until
I have looked over my letters and I will go with you, as our
routes dinnerwards are the same. By the way, here is a letter
from Lucile. "
V.
As the doctor read the letter, it was evident that it contained
something of unusual interest ; ever and anon an exclamation of
surprise would escape from his lips. As he finished reading he
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GEORGE WENTWORTH. 639
said : " Mr. Donaldson, here is one of the most wonderful mani-
festations of your cousin's dual organization that has ever taken
place, and I am so firmly convinced of its truth that I will not
go to dinner until I have thoroughly investigated the subject.
Listen while I read : " —
San Francisco, Cal., April 18, 18—.
Dear Doctor: — I am hardly In a condition to write you this morning,
but I cannot refrain from attempting it; last night something so strange
and absurd happened to me that I must relate it to you at once. I say
absurd, because it is so opposed to anything that could transpire, and it
will convince you that my trance states can sometimes picture to my
mind erroneous things, notwithstanding your assertions to the contrary.
About half past ten o'clock, which you know would be about 1 o'clock
A. m., Decatur time, I was in my room trying to quiet my nerves by
reading, as I had been feeling unusually depressed in spirits for about
two hours. Suddenly I found myself on Water Street in Decatur, in
front of the large store of Pollock and Mason. Soon a man approached
whom I at once recognized as George Wentworth, notwithstanding that
he had on a brown overcoat and hat of same color, different from any-
thing he ever wore, as you know he always dressed in black. He opened
the front door of the store with a key which he took from the overcoat
pocket, walked briskly back into the private office, where a gas light
was burning, seated himself in front of the safe, took a piece of paper
from his pocket which he studied for a time, then commenced turning
the knob on the safe; in a few minutes the door was opened, when with
a small key he opened the inner vault, took therefrom a large quantity
of gold coin and jewelry, which he placed in the overcoat pocket, locked
the safe, and went out. He passed around on to Merchant Street, and
went into a room on the third floor, about the middle of the block. He
lighted a lamp, placed the valuables in the upper drawer of an old-
fashioned red bureau that stood in one corner, locked the drawer and
the door of the room, then went over to the Jefferson Hotel.
Then the scene changed, and I found myself here, with the book I
had been reading still in my hand. I was very much excited, so much
so that I could not sleep until I had taken some of the anodyne which
you ordered me to use when nervous.
Now, dootor, do you not agree with me that this is perfectly ridicu-
lous ? and does it not convince you that even Dr. McPheeters can some-
times make a mistake when attempting to elucidate a scientific question?
— as you must admit that for once, at least, my vision has been false.
Well, I will laugh over it with you when I reach Decatur, which I hope
will be in the near future.
You must write mother at once, telling her that we can return home,
as I am very homesick. Do so immediately — that is a good old doctor.
Good by. Lucile.
Mr. Donaldson said that he could but think with his cousin,
that the vision was too absurd to be believed, notwithstanding
the coincidence of the brown overcoat; yet he was willing to go
with the doctor to procure the necessary officers and papers to
make a search of the room on Merchant Street, which would
confirm or contradict the revelations of the letter. They got the
warrant from 'Squire Parsons, and an officer to serve it. On
entering the room they found the red bureau, in the top corner
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640 THE ARENA.
of which were secreted the valuables which had been taken from
the safe. Mr. Pollock, who had accompanied them, found that
everything was there. The articles were placed in the hands of
the officer, subject to the order of the court. A warrant was
taken out for the arrest of George Wentworth, but he could not
be found.
VI.
A few days after the discovery of the stolen property, the
following letter was received. It was not dated, and had been
mailed on some railroad, which could not be made out, as the
stamp was blurred : —
Messrs. Pollock and Mason,
Gentlemen: — When this reaches you I will be in a far distant part
of the country, where under an assumed name I shall commence a new
life, and try to make amends for the great crime that I committed. As
I look at the terrible deed now, it is impossible for me to conceive how
or under what influence it was done. An evil demon seemed to have
taken possession of me — I was not myself.
On the evening of the crime, Mr. Sylvester went to his room in the
Jefferson Hotel immediately after supper; my room adjoined his, the
door between being partially open. Shortly after eight o'clock Mr.
Pollock came to his room, and I soon learned from their conversation
that they had a new combination for the safe at the store, and that this
had been done as a large quantity of gold coin had been placed in the
safe, together with a number of valuable diamonds and other costly
jewelry. Mr. Pollock and Mr. Sylvester ran over the combination
together, each writing it down on a piece of paper. Suddenly I felt an
uncontrollable desire to possess that wealth. I listened attentively to
every word that was spoken, and deliberately laid the plan by which I
would secure the prize, and yet not be suspected.
After Mr. Pollock left I ordered ice cream and lemonade sent to my
room, also some cake and fruit; I then invited Mr. Sylvester to join me,
which he did. While giving out the good things I placed an anodyne in
Mr. Sylvester's portion. In a short time he said that I must excuse him,
as he must retire, for he felt very sleepy.
About one o'clock I went into his room, put on his new brown spring
overcoat and hat, that no one should think strange of seeing me go into
the store, — as I had often been taken for him, even in the daytime, —
took a copy of the combination which was on the table, and went to the
store, where I had but little trouble in opening the safe. After securing
all of the money and valuable jewels, I took them to a room on Merchant
Street, feeling secure in secreting them there, as no one knew that 1
occupied that room. I then returned to the hotel feeling happy over my
ill-ffotten wealth, and in the fact that I would not be in the least danger
of being thought of as connected with the robbery; forgetting that the
eye of God had been upon me, and that He would bring me to judgment,
as He has. How mysterious His ways in this case — the girl whom I
love better than my own life being the innocent instrument of revealing
my guilt to the world.
As I write, and look back over the events of that night, it seems but
as a dream. I had never committed a theft before, nor had the least
inclination to do so.
Now gentlemen, I wish, as far as possible, to make amends for the
great wrong that I have committed. I am glad to know that you recov-
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GflOfcGE WENtfWOKTfl. 641
fired all of the valuables taken from the safe. That thousand dollars
which I placed to your order as security on the bond, you will pay to
Mr. Sylvester as a partial compensation for the suffering that 1 have
caused him. If I am prospered in worldly goods, I will pay him much
more before I die. Ask him to forgive me, and I hope that you will do
so, and pity a poor fellow-being who was too weak to resist a great
temptation, and that, too, when I had become egotistical enough to
believe that I was above the power of Satan.
Farewell. For the last time I sign my name
Geobge Wentwobth.
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"IN DE MIZ."
BY LASALLE CORBELL PICKETT (ME8. GENEBAL PICKETT).
PBEFACE.
tWiLL those of my readers who do not know the ways and
its and hearts of my colored people of the Old South kindly
first read this preface in explanation or extenuation, as it may be,
of my old black mammy's origin of her race, " In De Miz," which
as I wrote, across the years thought and memory took me back
to the days when life's water was wine, and made of me a child
again looking up into the dear, dusky face of that beloved black
mammy, listening with my unhurt faith to the folk lore of her
speculative midnight race, as she solved in her own random
shadowings its dim mysteries, giving birth to thoughts that strike
reason dumb, the while her passiveness, duty, wise submission,
loyalty, and love, made no quiritation of wrongs to right.
There was no term held in more reverential love and fear than
the one word "Master" by the faithful Southern slave; his
soul's divided service was between his master and his God; his
religion, fraught with the supernatural, was as broad as the
narrow grasp of his mind could reach; his conception of the
greatness of God was measured by his crude, untrained brain.
In his eyes the taking of a " chaw " of tobacco was a dignified,
luxurious custom, and one in which his paragon of perfection, the
Southern master, usually liberally indulged. In talking to us
children, to have said " Lord " without the prefix of the word
Marsa (Master), would have been to him unwonted disrespect to,
and unpardonable familiarity with, the omnipotent, all-wise,
all-merciful great Being.
There was no want of reverence in his comparison with and
rapt copartnership of his heavenly Father and his earthly master,
but instead thereof a sublime recognition of the fellowship of God
in his simple heart, his intuitive conception of two-ness as of
one-ness, the incompleteness of man apart from God, verifying
" So close is glory to our dust,
So near is God to man."]
Deed, honey, it am de gorspel truf, leas'wise dats de way I
yearn it tol', en I ain neber 'yearn it sputed. Taint no use er
dese yere niggers bein' so arrified 'bout it, nother. En dat w'at I
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"iv PR miz." 648
years, yer gits straPt lak I yearn it, kaze ef twa'n fer de w'ite
fo'kes dar would'n be no niggers 'tall (dat is, dar would'n be
none ter year tell on).
Twuz a long time ergo — 'way in de beginnin' w'en dar wan'
no fundament en no plantations, en dar wan' but des wun pusson
alivin', en he wuz Marsa Jesus' pa. En he mun, wuz de out'nes,
mos' suviguses, mos' stronges, mos' swiffes, wun eber wuz. Eve'y
t'ing den wuz hisen, en do he wuz dat rich en had so much per-
sesshuns 'blongin' ter 'ira, he cou'd tu'n de han' en mek anyt'ing
he sot he min' on (en outer nuttin at dat) .
De f us en fo'mus t'ing he mek, do, y?uz he bes, en in co'se it
orter be, w'en you comes ter dat ; kaze 'twuz Heben.
Atter dat, he mek de earf en de sea en-all-dat In De JMiz.
But der ain't nobody neber yeared nuffin' 'tall 'bout dem t'ings
w'ats in de Miz, fer you see 'twuz lak dis : Wen Marsa Lord spile
anyt'ing he wuz amekin on, he flung it in de Miz, bekaze ef he
had'n he could'n sey, w'en he wuz dun thoo wid his wuk, dat
" He saw 'twuz good."
Well, 'twuz nigh on ter Sunday, en he 'gin ter study 'bout w'at
he gwineter mek nex, w'ich 'twuz de een ov de week, en he
'termin' fer his las' piec' a wuk ter outdo all adem yu'ther ones ;
en w'iles he wuz mekin up he min' en ponderin', he tuk de pail
en wen' 'long ter de well ter draw sum water, w'en des' 'fo' he
lit de bucket down, lo-en-beholes he seed hisse'f 'fleeted. He
wuz dat pleas' and s'prised he wuz struck dum'. But des ez soon
ez he git ober his 'stonishment, he stop studyin' en he low dat
long ez he turn't out so many good jobs, he b'leeve he try
jubblicate hise'f.
Den I 'spose he t'ink too, w'en he look 'roun' en see all dat
'blongs ter 'im, dat, " It's a mighty po' bee don' mek mo' honey
dan he wan' fer hisse'f," but dat's needer yer ner dar, fer 'twan
mo'n 'sided 'tween hisse'f en his min' 'fo' he git out'n his tools
agin, he did, en he tuk some uv de earf w'ere he mek ov er
We'nzdy en rol' up he sleeves, tuck er chaw er terbacker, en
wen' ter wuk. En he mek a couple a dem Inizimagis (he
allers mek two ov er same kine), en tend ter mek um per-
zackly lak he wuz hese'f, des ez pritty, too, kaze de Lord ain' got
nare stingyfied sumpshus bone in he 'hole body.
Den bimeby atter he git thoo, he call Marsa Gabe (dat wuz he
oberseer, de haid man 'boutn de place w'at bosses de han's) en
tol' 'im ter go fotch de w'eelbarr' en tek bof dem dar Inizimagis
(fer in dem days dey wan name menses) en sot em in de sun
whar' dey could be a-dryin' darse'fs.
Well, sah, de way Marsa Gabe open he eyes en mek 'miration
w'en he see w'at he did see ! but he ain' say nuttin, sepin' he des
bow he haid, tech his f o'lock, en skrope he rite foots, en show
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644 THE ABENA.
hiz manners lak he wuz brung up ter do, bekaze he mighty
'especkf ul, en sez, sezee : —
" Yes, sah." So he tuck um up, des ez keerful ez he kin,
skeered on um en tarrified widin er inch uv his life too, least-
wise he had a mighty funny feelin' in de naberhood er de
gizzard (ef he wan' skeered en tarrified), en lay um down in de
w'eelbarr' en amble off ca-pluck-a-te-pluck, ca-pluck-a-te-pluck,
ca-pluck-a-te-pluck, twell he corned up 'long side de apple dryer,
whar' de sun wuz hottes', en sot em bof up 'ginst it on de
behime side un it, en lef um, en wen' 'long 'bouten he bizness,
asorter dallyin' roun' twell he masser lay down (lak he mos' in
gen'ally does in de ebenin') ter tek he nap. He wan' 'feared er
ober sleepin' hisse'f needer, he knowed pintedly he gwineter wek
up perzackly ter de minit dat dey wuz dry nuf ter wuk on ag'in
(w'ich he did sho 'nuff).
Den he call Marsa Gabe, en tol' 'im fer ter go 'long fetch dem
Inizimagis fer 'im ter put some bref in, en finish up. Marsa Gabe
pull offn he hat ag'in, totch he haid, skrope he foots des lak he
did afo, en sez, "Yes, sah." Ca-pluck-a-te-pluck, ca-pluck-a-
te-pluck, ca-pluck-a-te-pluck. But laws er massy on us ! Wen
he git ter de place whar' he knowed he lef um, dar wa'n but wun
uv um dar. He look eberywhar', but 'tain no use ; he kan' fins'
but des bar'ly de wun dat he seed w'en he fus corned. He look-
en-he-look-en -he-look en scratch he haid en studdy, mounstous
pestered bout'n it too, en wukken his thunkin' masheen fer all
he knowed.
He fotch bofe, en dar wan' but wun; en w'iles he wuz a
kalkulatin' how dat could a happen, w'ether sum er dem var-
mintses er beasteses er cropin' t'ings, dat wuz made dat same
Saddy mornin' could er kotch de missin' wun, en wuz a sayin'
ter hisse'f, "Dat folks w'ats allers pesterin' en bodderin' long
wa't ain' dem, en ain' got no bizness wid, orter neber come
ter no good een, en beasteses en varmints too ez ter dat des de
same ez re'l pussons," w'en he yeard Marsa Lord woice a-callin',
" Gabe, G-a-b-e, you Gabe, come along wid you, w'at you trollopin'
long dar fer, a-wasin' my time — you gwine ter tek all day? you
better come long dar 'f o you fins' out who's w'ich, en w'ich is who."
Marsa Gabe, he twemble all ober ; but he kan* fool long dat
losted one no mo' ; he knowed he bleeged ter go, so he tuck de
wun whar' he had en kyar dat long des ez fas' ez he kin trot.
He wuz far'ly kivered wid mud en mighty nigh outer win' w'en
he brung up long side de wuk shop en hist 'im out.
En I tell you he lay mighty low en ain't say nuttin 'tall 'bout
de terr' wun whar' he couldn' fins' ; bekaze he thunk to hisse'f,
"Maybe Marsa Lord mouter fergit Aw«e'/, 'bout dar bein' two on
um," but he did'n, no man dat he did'n.
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645
Wy — dey say he's dat 'tickler he tuck er count ov all de
sparrows en number de ve'y h'ars ov de he'ds, w'en he mek urn.
En w'en he see dar wa'n but wun, he cl'ar up he th'oat, en talk
biggerty, des lak he did wunce 'fo' (long time atter dis time,
do). 'Twuz outen doo's in de gyarden in de cool er de day (dat
same day w'en Marsa Adam en' he wife hide derse'fs), en dey
say dat dat time you could year his woice a-walkin' !
Well, he crowd he eyebrows up tergedder, sorter shett up
bof e eyes alak, en sez, sez 'ee, " Boy ! whar' — dat yuther wun ? "
Marsa Gabe look mighty sheepish, en slunk ba'k'ards. 'Twuz
tetch en go mun wid 'im, I tell you. So he low, " Wuz dar two
on'em?' ?
En de word wan' mo'n out'en his mouf, w'en he seed 'twan' no
use projeckin' wid Marsa Lord, kaze twiz de bug en de bee
martin, t'ain hard ter tell w'ich gwine ter git kotch, en so he up
en tol' all 'bout it ; how 'ticular he wuz, en how he sot bofe on
'em down tergedder a-techin wuner-nudder side by sides, en how
w'en he wen' back ter fetch em (des lak he wuz tole), dar wa'n
but des bar'ly wun ter behole, en he low dat he wuz gwineter
keep on a-lookin' w'en he yearn hisse'f call. Den Marsa Lord
look 'dignant, he woice roar, de earf shuck, en he 'spon : " Gabe
— go fetch dat yuther missin' wun. You year, sah ? "
Den Marsa Gabe say (des lak de patter-roller wuz behime 'im),
"Yes, sah, I gwine ret 'long," en he huddle he'se'f up ter-
gedder sorter skittish, lak he wuz a-dodgin' ; en wen 'long back,
en tuck all de pains he kin. He look fus wun side en den ter'r ;
den he tuck 'n ben' down he haid mo'nful. He wuz des gwine
hump he'se'f up en tu'n en go back w'en he drapped he eyes ;
en dar, krouched ker-flap on de groun', wuz de ter' wun. A li'le
mo', en he'd a-trompled on 'im.
Den, ef you b'leeve it, he skivered he wuz bu'nt black ez er
cole, mouf wide open, w'ite teef er shinin', en jam by a poun' er
wool on he haid whar' de sun dun kink all up. Fars er sleep, too.
" I clar ter grashus ! " sezee, " spose he dun git ter noddin' en fall
ober; he mout er git kotch wid emptiness in de pit er de stum-
muck, er he mout en got ter hoanin atter sumpin t'eat." But eny
how dar he wuz, des lak I tell you; en dey sez dat dat's de
kasion er niggers bein' so sleepy haided ter dis day.
Well, Marsa Gabe, he krope down on he all fo'es, en tuck 'im
up en tote 'im ter de w'eelbarr' en den kyar' im long ca-pluck-a-
te-pluck, ca-pluck-a-te-pluck, ca-pluck-a-te-pluck.
Now, den, w'en Marsa Lord look en seed dat hiz wuk wuz all
sp'ilt en mint, dat de sun dun mos' bu'n it black ez er charcoal,
he shuk he haid en bat he eyes en turnt up he nose lak, en sez,
sezee : " He ain' worf folhn' time en boderen' long wid. Tek
'im, Gabe, en go fling 'im 4 in de Miz.' "
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646 THE ARENA.
By dat time Marsa Lord wuz dun thoo wid dat fas wan, en he
wuz a stannin' up 'periently lak he thunk he wuz in a crowd, wid
his han's in his britches pocket, hat cocked on wun side,
smokin' er seegyar. En he bow mighty familious lak en tooken
bodaciously open up de confab hisse'f wid Marsa Lord, en sez,
sezee : " Skuze me, Lord, but don' 'stroy 'im, pleas'. Don' fling
'im * in de Miz,' go'n en finish 'im up, en gi' 'im ter me ter wait
on me."
En so de Lord did. He retch up en git de kyarvin knife down,
en kyarved offn de loos'nes uv de bu'nt poshuns, en den tuck
sum san' paper en polish 'im en fix 'im up de bes' he kin (out'n
er bad job), en gin 'im ter de w'ite man ter wait on 'im; en he
bin awaitin' on 'im eber sense fum dat time forre'd twell dis
prsen' day, en hits wunner dese yer jobs w'ats gwinter las' er
long time — don' you fergit dat ofiPn yo' min.
En it's bleedged ter be dat away, honey ; 'twan' none er we-alls
choozn, howsumeber dat may be, but all de same we'se boun' ter
mek de bes' un hit. De moon may shine, but a litered knot's
mighty handy ter hab roun' ; hits bet'r ter be sumpin dan nuttin.
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THE COMING KELIGION.
B. O. FLOWER.
Love will conquer all at last.
—Tennyson.
Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger
And In Its ashes plant the tree of Peace.
— Whittiee.
To hunt the tiger of oppression out
From office ; and to spread the Divine Faith
Like calming oil on all the stormy creeds,
And fill the hollows between wave and wave ;
To nurse my children on the milk of Truth,
And alchemize old hates into the gold of Love.
—Tennyson.
Through the harsh noises of our day
A low, sweet prelude finds its way :
Through clouds of doubt and creeds of fear,
A light is breaking calm and clear.
That song of Love, now low and far,
Erelong shall swell from star to star ;
That light, the breaking day, which tips
The golden-spired Apocalypse.
— Whjttieb.
Perhaps few persons outside of scholarly theologians appre-
ciate the magnitude or far-reaching significance of the revolution
in progress throughout the Christian world, which is rapidly
changing religious conceptions regarding man and his relations
to the Infinite. The profound students of life and religion in
modern times have found many thought-compelling facts con-
fronting them which were unknown to the great spiritual leaders
of earlier days. However fearless and fond of truth they may
have been, in the very nature of the case they did not and could
not utter the final word. Humanity, actuated by the spirit of
the Infinite, is ever pressing onward in search of spiritual illumi-
nation. The desire for knowledge becomes a passion with high-
born natures. To know the truth is the supreme attainment, the
ultimate of man's dream. And in his ever onward march he is
like a traveller ascending a mountain range : each day a broader
world unfolds before his vision ; each day he sees how incomplete
was his conception, and how inaccurate his conclusion based on
the outlook of the day before.
The wonderful progress of the race during the present century,
due largely to systematic and intelligent research, has opened up
broad vistas of truth never before suspected. Man's conception
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648 THE ARENA.
of the universe and of the All-knowing One, whose life thrills
through all life, was .never so exalted as to-day. But these great
revelations, while broadening human conception and exalting
man's ideals, have revealed the fact that many positions main-
tained by theologians, when human vision was more circum-
scribed, are untenable in the broader truth revealed by the
Infinite to the children of this generation. That the new vistas
opened to view by human progress and the falling away of
old-time limitations should awaken feelings of a widely different
nature in the breasts of men equally sincere, is by no means
strange.
To one class of theological students the revelations of our day
are an inspiration, calling forth their highest and holiest en- •
deavors. To them the Creator is no longer the God of a peculiar
people, with an ear for ages deaf to the cry of earth's teeming
millions, but in Him they behold the Love and Life-Essence of
the universe. Instead of a greatly magnified man, they see a
wise, order-loving, and conscious Energy, which through the
tireless ages, step by step, leads life from the lowest forms on to
heaven-aspiring man. To them, in the light of to-day, religion
reflects the sanity of the Infinite.
On the other hand, a large number of equally sincere Biblical
scholars, who have from the cradle learned that all religions from
Alpha to Omega lay between the covers of our sacred book, look
upon the new thoughtwith the greatest apprehension. They are
not willing to recognize the strands of gold in the great religions
of other ages. Their conception of God is such that they can-
not imagine He has spoken in any vital way to the millions upon
millions of aspiring souls of earth through any other channels
than the Jewish Scriptures and the New Testament. They
believe it is dangerous to study comparative theology. They fear
they may offend the Almighty and imperil their own souls by
opening their eyes to the new heaven and the new earth, which
the panorama of our century has unfolded before their vision.
Their timidity, however, is no more striking than their fear lest
the triumph of the new thought might prove fatal to religion.
Ah, they little know the human soul, which in all climes and
under all conditions has loved and asjrired; which in savage and
civilized alike, for untold ages, has, from contemplation of the
wayside flower, turned to the limitless ether above with a ques-
tion and a prayer ; the human soul which turns to the Omnipo-
tent Conscious Energy which pervades the universe as naturally
as does the blade of grass pierce sunward through the sod, or as
the babe turns to its mother for consolation and caress. There
are many points widely divergent among the great races' of
earth; but the soul of each great people has recognized
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THE COMING BELIGION. 649
intuitively an overruling Intelligence. As the needle of the
compass points to the pole, so the deathless monitor of the
human brain has ever pointed to the All-knowing One who
guides the destinies of systems of worlds, and whose action is
expressed through immutable law.
The conflict so deeply stirring the religious world is the result
of facts which the new time has revealed to mankind — facts
which cannot longer be dismissed by the wholesale denunciation
of those who have frankly faced the new problems. A man who
wishes to sleep in the morning may draw down the blinds when
the light faintly streaks the east, and for a time forget that the
day approaches ; but ere long the risen sun floods the land with
light, its beams creep in on either side of the curtain, the carol of
the birds proclaims the day, and the bustle and turmoil of life in
action force him to realize that the night has passed.
So it is to-day. The revelations of modern science in the
physical world; archaeological discoveries of this century; the
research of orientalists who have brought before the mind
of the occidental world the great religions of the far East;
inventions which have rendered travel easy, and which are
fast making the whole world an immense family; scientific
investigation of psychical phenomena; together with numerous
other influences, more or less closely allied to some of these
major agencies — have rendered it futile for the church longer
to ignore problems which have already influenced, to a greater
or less degree, every intelligent person who has to any extent
kept in touch with the intellectual progress of the present
century.
I now desire to notice briefly some of the principal thought-
moulding influences which, by appealing to man from various
points of view, have silently wrought a revolution in the popular
conception of the Infinite One, of creation, human destiny, and
other problems of vital bearing upon mankind.
ri ) Progress in Physical Science. Every step taken by man
in his slow and painful ascent has awakened the same fear and
called forth the same antagonism which convulses many theo-
logical centres to-day ; but throughout the past we find that the
broader vision has ultimately taken the place of the more con-
tracted and childish conceptions of the race, exactly as manhood
evolves from childhood.
When a great truth comes vaguely before the conscience of
man, and he knocks perse veringly and earnestly at the door of
knowledge, it usually opens in answer to his thought-compelling
desire, notwithstanding the fact that progress is slow, and often
in action resembles the ebb and flow of the tide. Thus a
luminous truth has frequently come forth in response to the soul
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650 THE ABENA.
cry of a great nature or in answer to the laborious research of
some high-born soul, but when given to the world, it has awak-
ened a storm of opposition, which not infrequently ended in the
martyrdom of the prophet or scientist, and the receding of the
tide, until another, taking up the same idea, has added from
his higher interior vision to its luminosity, or succeeded in
arresting the attention of the world by proof more tangible to
the physical senses. Thus it has ever been in the history of
religious thought, of scientific truth and philosophical specula-
tion; but peering up the vista of the past from the vantage
ground of to-day, it is clear that the general trend has been
onward and upward.
" And step by step since time began
We see the steady gain of man.
That all the good the past has hod
Remains to make our own time glad;
And still the new transcends the old
In signs and tokens manifold."
Perhaps the most pronounced of the present century influ-
ences which have led to what is popularly known as the new
theology or higher criticism, is found in the wonderful strides
taken in the realm of physical science, and the rise of modern
critical methods.
Charles Darwin and Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, taking up the
thread cast out by Lamark and Erasmus Darwin, patiently and
persistently accumulated fact upon fact which when arranged
and classified, with their logical deductions, proved an impreg-
nable bulwark for the theory of evolutionary development.
These great working naturalists, reinforced by the magnificent
deductions of Herbert Spencer, or perhaps I should say rein-
forced with a formidable array of incontrovertible facts, and the
luminous and far-reaching philosophy of Mr. Spencer, and with
their co-laborers, succeeded in arousing the attention of the
world. Of the storm which followed little need be said, for the
day has so recently passed that most readers will remember
the bitter hostility provoked by this new view of the develop-
ment of life.
In 1876 Rev. Minot J. Savage, the eminent Boston Unitarian
divine, after an exhaustive study of the subject, frankly accepted
the evolutionary theory, and delivered a series of lectures on
"Evolution and Religion." At that time he stood almost alone
among theologians, but since then evolution has not only been
accepted as conclusive by a vast majority of scientists of recog-
nized ability, but numbers of the most illustrious theological
scholars in orthodox churches have accepted it as proved beyond
reasonable doubt. And it is interesting to observe that the
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THE COMING BEUGION. 651
men among the great orthodox denominations who have given
adhesion to this theory of life are as spiritual as they are intel-
lectual. Who, for example, among orthodox European writers,
has done so much in recent years to awaken a deep religious
sentiment in the hearts of the people as Professor Drummond ?
— and yet in his series of scholarly lectures on evolution, deliv-
ered during the past winter in Boston, he unhesitatingly and
unqualifiedly accepted this theory of the development of life.
Who among American orthodox divines is more spiritual and
in more perfect sympathy with the great burden-bearing masses
of our day, than Dr. Lyman Abbott, another evolutionist? And
so I might continue to enumerate many of the most truly spirit-
ual leaders of the religious world, who have during the past
decade unhesitatingly declared their belief in this theory of
life.
II. Archceological Research. The patient research among the
ruins of long-departed civilizations, carried on with such tireless
perseverance during this century, has turned a flood of light
upon our own sacred Book, and also upon the religious beliefs of
those who lived before or contemporaneous with Israel; while
excavations in Greece and Italy and a careful examination of the
oldest New Testament manuscripts extant, have revealed to those
who place truth above prejudice many vitally important truths
regarding our New Testament Scripture and popular Christian
theology.
III. The Religions of the East. Second only to evolution
in its influence upon the thought of our day has been the
result of modern scholarship in bringing to the light of the
occidental world the ancient religions of the far East. To Max
Mttller and other indefatigable workers we owe much for the
broader vision of religion which is the heritage of our time, for
through the conscientious work of these scholars, the student of
religion has found that God had spoken to the world in various
ages and through many tongues. Thus, instead of being a
jealous and partial God, the thoughtful believer who studies
truth as brought to light through archaeological research, and
as unfolded in the great religions of Asia, finds the golden thread
of lofty ethics, the spirit of the Golden Rule, and the supreme
truth that in unselfishness lies the secret of the greatest happiness,
reflected, more or less clearly, in all earth's greatest religions.
He is able to say with Max Mllller, " There is no religion which
does not say ' Do good and avoid evil.' " Moreover, he finds in
the ancient sacred works of the East much which bears the stamp
of the highest inspiration, as well as a vast accumulation of
material thoroughly puerile and absurd in character. He finds
Confucius teaching : —
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652 THE ARENA.
No virtue is higher than love to all men, and there is no loftier aim in
government than to profit all men.* . . . Happy union with wife and
children is like the music of lutes and harps. And when there is con-
cord among brethren the harmony is delightful and enduring.
In the Avesta, the sacred book of Persia, he reads : —
The reward which thou hast given to those of the same law as thy-
self, O Lord, All-knowing, that give thou to us. May we attain to that,
namely, union with thy purity for all eternity, t . . . Holiness is the best
of all good, t
In the Rig- Veda of India he finds such lofty hymns as the
following : —
Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ?
He who gives life; He who gives strength;
Whose command all the bright gods revere ;
"Whose shadow is immortality.
Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ?
He who through his power is the one King of the breathing and
awakening world ;
Who governs all, man and beast
,Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ?
He whose greatness those snowy mountains, whose greatness the sea
proclaims;
He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm ;
He through whom the heaven was established — nay, the highest
heaven ;
He to whom heaven and earth, standing firm by his will, look up.
Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ?
He who by his might looked even over the water-clouds —
The clouds which gave strength and lit the sacrifice ;
He who alone is God above all gods.
Again, in the Bible of the Buddhists he finds such exalted
teachings as the following : —
Hatred docs not cease by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by love.
... A man who foolishly does me wrong, I will return to him the
protection of my ungrudging love. The more evil cometh from him,
the more good shall go from me. . . . If a man live a hundred years and
spend the whole of his time in religious attention and offerings to the
gods, sacrificing elephants and horses, all this is not equal to one act of
pure love in saving life. . . . Not in the void of heaven, not in the
depths of the sea, not by entering the rocky cliffs of the mountains, not
in any of these places, or by any means, can a man escape the conse-
quences of his evil deed.§
Then turning to the Stoics of Greece and Rome, he finds
the same exalted ethics. He notes Epictetus, the philosopher,
saying : —
What ought not to be done, do not even think. . . . Remember you
are an actor of just such a part as is assigned you by the Poet of the
play — of a short part if the part be short, of a long part if the part
_____ __ _ __ ______
jYashtXXIV. . §Tripitaka.
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THE COMIKG RELIGIOK. 653
be long. Should He wish you to act the part of a beggar, take care to
act it naturally and nobly; and the same if it be the part of a lame man,
or a ruler, or a private man. For this is in your power, to act well the
part assigned you. . . . Nothing is nobler than high-mindedness and
gentleness and philanthropy and doing good. . . . Prescribe for yourself
an ideal and then act up to it.
And thus he hears God speaking through the noblest souls of
every age and to every people. He finds the golden thread of
divine wisdom running through all the noblest faiths, but he also
finds much dross in all.
IV. The mvltitudinous inventions which have followed the
utilization of steam and electricity constitute another important
factor. These have taken away the terror of travel, and have
enabled the nations of the earth to mingle one with another.
No one can estimate the extent of the subtle but very potent
influences which this commingling of the followers of the various
great religions has exerted on the mind of mankind, modifying
and enlarging the views until the old ideas seem no longer
tenable. I do not know as I can better illustrate this than by
quoting from a dialogue which recently took place at the World's
Fair, and was there reported by an editorial contributor to
Unity : —
Near the great Ferris wheel you may chance upon a Brahmin who is
busy turning off very pleasing effects on little cards with his thumb nail.
He has bright eyes and a plentiful flow of wit. He is usually sur-
rounded by admiring ladies.
44 Only one nickel, lady; will you buy? You seem interested."
The lady has been studying him intently for some minutes.
" No, I believe not. But I would like to know if you are a Christian ?"
44 A Christian I No, indeed. Why should I be a Christian? I am a
Brahmin. As well ask, * Are you a Brahmin ? * but I know you could
not be. No more could you be a Christian if you were born in Turkey.
You would be Mohammedan sure. For Bible you would read the
Koran — "
44 That is not my opinion."
44 Opinion! It is not opinion, it is fact. We are all born to our reli-
gion. But it's all the same — Mohammedan, Christian. Have a flower,
lady?"
Another lady, interposing, — " I would like one with your autograph."
44 Oh, sure! 'Tis but a moment to write it" And as he writes:
44 This is not my profession. I wished to come to the fair. My people
say no. But the vessel come, the vessel go, and I was gone, too. So I
make my thumb nail — I learn it when a boy — to serve me. I earn some
money, I see the fair, I go home. As for my religion, I am nobody here.
Here, the Christian on top, I am under. At home I am on top, the
Christian under. But we should not be so unkind. Apple pie you like;
lemon pie I like; but it's pie all the same. So with religion — different
but the same."
44 But have you no fear of going to hell ?" persisted the lady, intent
on his soul.
44 To hell ? Oh, no! I fear to go nowhere; so hell is not in me, I am
everywhere safe."
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654 THE ARENA.
V. Psychical Phenomena. We are just beginning to under-
stand that a marvellous realm remains for the sympathetic
scientist in the field of psychic research. When modern Spirit-
ualism arose, science sneered and theology raged ; but despite
the fraud practised, despite the ignorance of sensitives, despite
the frown of conventionalism, of religion, and of science, it
spread throughout the civilized world, until to-day it would be
difficult to estimate the number of persons who believe in the
reality of psychic phenomena. Among those who do believe are
many eminent scientists, professors, theologians, and scholars in
every profession, and the phenomena which called forth the
anathema of the church a generation ago, have within the past
three months elicited the following expression from the eminent
orthodox English clergyman, Rev. H. R. Haweis * : —
Occultism is not only a question ; it is the question of the day. The
recognition of it is the strength of Roman Catholicism ; the denial of it
is the weakness of the Protestant and Unitarian churches. The occult
is not a new thing, hut the scientific treatment of it is new. The blot
upon Roman Catholic occultism is its rejection of scientific investiga-
tion; the blot upon rationalist religion is its denial of the facts. The
facts have always existed, but never, until now, has scientific examina-
tion been possible. Progress in the occult is, therefore, now for the lirst
time possible.
Electricity has been known for thousands of years, but the electric
telegraph is a thing of yesterday. Musical sound, and susceptibility to
it, have existed for ages, but the art of music, as an independent art, is
only four hundred years old. It had to wait for the simple discovery of
the octave and the perfect cadence; then it made gigantic strides.
We must have a grammar of accidence in art, in literature, in science,
and religion. We must have not only facts but formulae. Science will
shortly be the handmaid of so-called supernaturalism — the acolyte of
religion.
The independent spiritual consciousness of man — a something not
matter in matter — is about to be established. The survival of human
personality after the shock and redistribution of atoms which we call
death, will shortly be proved — and proved again and again, and to
order.
Presently the race, through the enormous enlargement and the
abnormal development of its mental and spiritual faculties, will take
strides unknown and, at present, incalculable; and the man of the near
future may be as far above the man of the present day as the man of
our day is beyond the troglodyte or the prehistoric cave dweller.
After the spiritual phenomena came what was known as
Christian Science and Mental Healing. The remarkable cures
of cases pronounced incurable by scholarly physicians soon
awakened general interest in the philosophy, which in its essence
strongly resembled much of the metaphysical thought of India.
Almost parallel with the rise of Christian Science, came what is
popularly known as Theosophy, a somewhat modernized and
* Mr. W. T. Stead. New Psychical Quarterly, Borderland, July, 1893.
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*Effi COMTffG fcELIGIOtf. 655
Occidentalized presentation of Buddhism. All these waves of
psychical and metaphysical thought, while denounced as " de-
lusions," produced profound impressions on a receptive public,
and all tended to lift the mind of man from gross materialism to
contemplation of the power of mind, the result of thought,
and the probability of demonstrating the reality of a life after
death in a scientific manner.
Now while the phenomena which gave rise to the philosophy
of modern Spiritualism was attracting much attention, an emi-
nent English physician by the name of Braid determined to
overthrow a "delusion of mesmerism," which, notwithstanding
the report made by the famous Bailey Commissioners, in which
it was characterized as a fraud, had refused to die. This phy-
sician began his investigations under the popular impression that
mesmerism was a fraud. In the end he established the verity of
the phenomena, and rechristened it hypnotism.
During recent years the Society for Psychical Research, in
England, and still later the American Psychical Society, have
been engaged in careful, critical, and scientific examinations of
psychical phenomena, with results which cannot be ignored by
the thoughtful among theological scholars.
It will be seen that many and complex have been the agencies
which have borne the thought of the world to a higher altitude,
and have compelled a readjustment of religious conceptions.
Europe was not the Europe of the Middle Ages after the print-
ing press had been invented, after Copernicus and Galileo had
made their discoveries and deductions, after Titian, Da Vinci,
Angelo, and Raphael had wrought for art, after Columbus had
discovered America, or the Reformation had been ushered in.
So the world to-day is not the world in which men lived before
Darwin, Wallace, Spencer, and Proctor came upon the stage of
life ; before archaeological discoveries had revealed valuable facts
to truth-loving minds; before modern scholarship had unfolded
the treasures of the religion of the far East; before the inven-
tions of this century had bound the world together as one
family; before psychical phenomena challenged public attention,
and metaphysical thought lifted man's eyes from the earth and
the exterior to the contemplation of mind. So multitudinous
have been the changes and so rapid the progress of recent
decades, that it is no exaggeration to say that we are living in a
new world, and he who would help mankind in any vital way
must recognize this truth. This is precisely what the earnest
thinkers among the theologians, who have embraced what is
known as the higher criticism, appreciate. They have come up
from the lower plane with the onward marching thought of the
age, and, having caught a glimpse of the broader horizon of
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656 ME AftEKA.
truth, are fearlessly championing the higher conceptions of reli-
gion and nobler ideals of the nature of God. And because these
scholars are walking hand in hand into the larger truth which
God has given to the world to-day, they will succeed, and their
success means far more than the triumph of a faction. It will
mark a higher altitude in the religious development of the world.
It will usher in an era of peace in place of the terrible strife of
the past, for the religion it will represent will be grounded in
love. Toleration will prevail, or rather liberty and justice, for
the Golden Rule will be a living rule of conduct.
The one dark shadow which Christianity has cast over the
world is found rooted in the spirit of dogmatic bigotry, which
led sincere men to fancy they were carrying out God's command
when persecuting all who failed to see the truth from their point
of view. This curse of creed and dogma which has blighted all
theology dependent on belief rather than conduct, is directly
responsible for the frightful persecutions of the past, which
racked, tortured, burned, and buried alive men, women, and
children. The most sincere men, acting under a belief that they
were doing the will of a God who had prepared an everlasting
furnace for his own children, often became the most savage and
remorseless persecutors. Indeed, this baleful spirit of intol-
erance has destroyed love, awakened the tiger in man, and
proved the supreme curse of Christian civilization. It compelled
Calvin to flee from France for his life, and in turn led Calvin to
compass the death of Servetus. It drove the Pilgrims from
England, and in turn led them to banish Roger Williams. It
is to-day prompting inhuman and savage persecutions of the
Seventh Day Adventists in Tennessee and Maryland. It has
been this baleful spirit of intolerance and persecution which has
driven scores of the noblest and most humane souls of the
Christian centuries into atheism. They were horrified at the
savagery of the religious enthusiasts. They loved their fellow-
men too much to be able to worship a Deity of wrath.
But with the higher conceptions of God which the new
thought is ushering in, the spirit of persecution will disappear,
and though various forms and beliefs may remain, the conditions
will be much as More foreshadowed them in " Utopia." Liberty
and fraternity will prevail, because men's conception of God will
be higher and more human, and following upon this more exalted
and divine religion will come a gradual union in spirit of all who
earnestly seek the truth, and the creed of mankind will be, a The
world is my country and to do good my religion."
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&c/LiA ^
^T^5^r-
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THE ARENA.
No. XLVIII.
NOVEMBER, 1893.
THOUGHTS IN AN ORPHAN ASYLUM.
BY RABBI SOLOMON SCHINDLER.
TWO journeymen, says a German poet, who had been
travelling through many lands, returned after an absence of
several years to their native town.
" What have you seen ? Tell us," eagerly asked the
friends who came to greet them.
"Pshaw!" the one yawned indifferently. "What have I
seen? Mountains and meadows, trees and rivers, cities,
villages, and people."
u We have seen," exclaimed the other enthusiastically,
his eye beaming with rapture, "mountains and meadows,
trees and rivers, cities, villages, and people."
Kant as well as Schopenhauer has proved mathematically
that our intellect can grasp only the qualities of a thing,
not the thing itself, -and it is a fact which also can be proven
that the qualities of a thing present themselves to the intel-
lect of different persons in a different shape. A poet will
stand with admiration before the same plant which a botanist
will dry for his collection, as a fair specimen of the order or
the genus, without the poet's rapture over the beauty of
its colors. A farmer will tear out the same plant by the
root, looking upon it as an unwelcome weed, and a fourth
person will pass by indifferently without even noticing it.
Many are the visitors to the orphan asylums that are
found in almost every large city. Thousands of names are
registered in the books which are kept in the offices of such
institutions for their signatures. Guests are cordially re-
ceived either by the superintendent himself or by some other
official, conducted through the long corridors from one wing
Copyrighted 1893, by the Arena Publishing Co. 657
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658 THE AfcEKA.
of the magnificent building to the other, and shown every-
thing worth seeing. They will admire the bright and airy
dormitories in which the neat and scrupulously clean little
beds stand like soldiers in a line; they will watch with
astonishment how by means of a well-devised system the
hundreds of children are served in the dining hall with
marvellous rapidity; they will look compassionately upon
the poor orphans, whom grim death has robbed of their
parents, and be happy in the thought that it is the good
fortune of their own children to live with their parents in a
comfortable home. They will, perhaps, offer a part of the
surplus of their parental love to one of the poor orphans,
whose hair they will smooth, or whose cheek they will pat.
It may be they will even open their pocket-book, and leave a
donation for the support of the asylum.
If it were possible to collect the thoughts which pass
through the minds of visitors on such occasions, and to
assort and analyze them, we should find that they all turn
around one pivot, viz., the thought that no greater mis-
fortune can happen to a child than to lose both his parents,
and consequently to be put into an orphan asylum. They
will observe whether justice is done to these poor children
(will the reader please emphasize the word "poor");
whether they are kept clean, whether they have sufficient
and wholesome food, and whether they receive proper edu-
cation. The business man will watch the business manage-
ment of the institution; the housekeeper will notice the
standard of cleanliness that is kept up; the gormand will
taste of the soup, and the would-be philanthropist, who
brings his friends in his carriage to the asylum that he may
show them what a magnificent institution We maintain,
will direct their attention to the architectural beauties of the
building, not forgetting the marble tablet in the reception
room upon which his name is engraved, to be transmitted
in golden letters to future generations as the founder, or at
least a member of this noble institution.
Indeed, we all have eyes apparently constructed alike, and
yet how differently we see things through them. It is my
privilege to look at things as my eyes will permit me, and
when I lately visited an orphan asylum I saw many things
which other visitors generally do not see. Why, then, should
my thoughts not have been propelled by the sights I saw in
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THOUGHTS IN AN ORPHAN ASYLUM. 659
another direction than that which our present well-regulated
society considers a safe road to travel ?
*****
A few months ago I visited the orphan asylum in C.
The able and scholarly superintendent, Dr. W., showed me
all over the house, the magnificence of which, as well as its
excellent appointments, could not fail to arouse my admira-
tion. I saw the schoolrooms, the dining hall, and the
dormitories. I inspected the playrooms and the tank in
which fifty boys or girls at a time could enjoy cold or warm
baths. I observed the orphans in the class room, in the yard,
and while taking their meals. I could not help noticing
their blooming health, their youthful sprightliness, their
healthy appetite, their clean and well-fitting garments. It
caused me exceeding pleasure to observe with what affec-
tion they clung to their teachers and especially to the
superintendent, nor did I fail to observe the love which the
teachers harbored for their pupils, or the brotherly and
sisterly sentiments which these orphans showed to one
another. It was a pleasure to notice how the larger children
took care of the smaller ones; in a word, I saw many things
which every visitor may see but which he rarely observes.
I saw, moreover, that the five hundred children of this insti-
tution were not at all to be pitied on account of the loss
of their parents, but that their lot had become one to be en-
vied when compared with the hundreds of thousands of chil-
dren whose parents have to struggle with the worries and
anxieties of everlasting poverty, or with those whom death
has robbed only of either the father or the mother. Even
when compared with the children of well-to-do or wealthy
parents, the balance would be in their favor, because the
latter, being pampered, become effeminate ; their talents are
not discovered and stimulated by an able educator, but
rather spoiled and misdirected by the egotism of parents
who love but themselves in their children. A silly, even
a cruel wish rose then for a moment in my heart, which
I will confess, although I feel the danger of being misunder-
stood in doing so. I wished at that moment that death
would remove all poverty-stricken parents in the land, in
order that their children might enjoy a happy youth, free
from care, worthy of the human name, and enter upon active
life well developed and educated, with a prospect of success.
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660 THE ABENA.
" What are the conditions necessary for the admission of
a child into your institution ? " I asked the superintendent.
The answer was, that only children are admitted both of
whose parents are dead, and who have no relatives of means
who could take care of them.
Let us now take two children out of similar circles and
observe the contrast. The one has lost both his parents and,
therefore, is admitted into the asylum. From that moment
he comes under the eye of a highly-cultured educator; he
receives clothing, food, and proper direction. Light and
ventilation are carefully provided. He is trained to scrupu-
lous Cleanliness. Even while playing, he is watched and his
character noted. Good influences surround him from all
sides, while evil is kept from him ; even inherited faults are
quickly discovered and systematically uprooted. In case of
sickness, the best care is taken of him. A physician is called
in time and his advice carefully followed. When the time
arrives in which the child must choose an occupation for his
future life, the advice of the educator who has discovered
his talents long before and has caused them to be developed,
is his for the asking.
The other child, to whom a good (?) fortune has left both
his parents, is brought up in narrow quarters that lack light
and air. He is surrounded by misery and destitution and
the squalor and uncleanliness which necessarily accompany
them. His food is unwholesome and insufficient. If his
shoes are torn, his parents will complain that at present they
have no money to buy him new ones or even to have them
mended. He is left to himself. His father is at work all
day, and in the evening is too tired to devote an hour to the
training of his children ; in most cases he does not even
understand more of his parental duties than that he has the
right to thrash his child. The mother is overburdened with
household cares, and thus the child is left to all the evil
influences which surround the miserable neighborhood as
with a dark cloud. His sentiments are suppressed, his
talents remain unnoticed. The public schools can do but a
part of the educational work, although indeed it is a great
boon to the children of the poor that at least during five
hours a day they are brought within the reach of better
influences and during that time may enjoy better light and
air. In case of sickness, quack medicines are tried before
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THOUGHTS IN AN ORPHAN ASYLUM. 661
the dispensary doctor is called, and his advice remains un-
heeded, because light, air, and wholesome food are medicines
which cannot be procured at the drug store. Choice of
occupation is entirely out of the question. After the child
has reached his fourteenth year, he is obliged to take the
first place which offers itself, in order to earn a few cents.
A city which supports an orphan asylum of about four hun-
dred pupils contains, on an average, thirty thousand children
who are denied all these rights and possibilities of life which
I have enumerated, because they are so happy (?) as to
possess parents. It is evident that all these miseries assume
larger proportions when the father is dead and the widow
alone must support her children.
44 But, my dear sir," the reader will say, " you leave out
the consideration that the love of parents to children and
the affection of brothers and sisters to one another, over-
balance all these material advantages which the* orphan
asylum offers."
Let us not talk of the affection of brothers and sisters
towards one another. Most parents, be they rich or poor, are
troubled to keep peace between brothers and sisters. Frater-
nal affection is less reliable than friendship; but supposing
that the family does develop sentiments of love in children
towards one another, is not the orphan asylum still a family
though on a larger scale ? In place of three or five or seven
brothers and sisters, hundreds are given here to the pupil.
He has the choice of making warmer alliances with those
who are congenial to him and whose hearts are attuned
with his.
And parental love ? While it is true that in the love of
a mother lies a secret charm, we must not forget that
parental love, so highly praised, finds its strongest root in
instinct and self love; it must not be overlooked that this
very parental love often grows foolish, and we must remem-
ber that the mere expression of love is not all that ensures a
proper education. The most loving mother is not always
the best educator.
There are persons who are gifted by nature with unselfish
love; who possess a certain magnetism that will attract
others and establish a mutual relationship. Such persons
find their life's happiness in the profession of teaching, and
when they are placed as teachers in an orphan asylum the
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662 THE ARENA.
radiation of their love is far more beneficial to the pupil than
that of the best parents. When I observed the love with
which the pupils of the orphan asylum in C. clung to their
teachers, how they left their play to be petted by the super-
intendent, it became clear to me that love in itself is
independent of blood relationship.
* * * * *
Nothing is easier and affords us greater pleasure than to
utter a wish, but if it were possible to note down and to
classify all the wishes which daily rise in our minds, we
should find that they all could be divided into two sections.
One would comprise those whose realization is not only im-
possible, but not even expected. The other would contain
such as could be realized by our own efforts, without the aid
of any power outside of ourselves. Hence the wishes of the
first section are absurd, while those of the second are un-
necessary. Yet the torrent of our wishes will not be stayed
even by the dam which sound logic sometimes constructs to
weaken the force of the current.
The sight of the happy, well-fed, well-dressed, and well-
educated orphans, and the corresponding compassion for the
thousands of children being brought up in misery by their
poverty-stricken parents, induced me to wish that the real
cause of their misery, their parents, might be suddenly re-
moved, so that the children might enjoy the same privileges
and the same happy youth as orphans! But what a foolish
wish that was! Does it not make me appear a second Calig-
ula ? (It is said that this Roman emperor once uttered the
wish that the whole Roman people had but one neck, so
that he could enjoy striking off its head at one blow.) Of
course I never earnestly desired the realization of this, and I
knew well that it was absurd because it would demand an
impossibility. But it was also a member of that second sec-
tion of wishes, those which are unnecessary because they
desire conditions which can be brought about by our own
activity, and without the aid of any power beyond our own.
A moment's reflection showed me that there is no reason to
wait for the death of parents in order to give to their chil-
dren the benefits w T hich a well-regulated orphan asylum
offers, because all children could be brought up in the same
manner in which now only orphans are reared. The absurd-
ity of my wish impressed me still more, when I reflected
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THOUGHTS IN AN ORPHAN ASYLUM. 663
that live people can do more . for such institutions by
supporting them than the dead. I began to figure.
The annual expense for the support and education, let us
say, of five hundred children, will reach thirty-five thousand
dollars, or, to leave a margin, fifty thousand dollars. For
that outlay each individual child gets the best of everything,
and what is the lxiost useful for his welfare. He is supplied
with good, wholesome food, with clothing according to the
seasons, with an abundance of light and pure air; he is
trained to scrupulous cleanliness ; he receives a good school-
ing; he is surrounded by that moral atmosphere in and
through which alone a strong character can be developed;
he is taken care of in sickness ; in a word, his development
is of body, intellect, and soul. The average cost for each
child would thus be about one hundred dollars per annum.
If the reader will now take the trouble to figure out what
it costs poor people annually to bring up one of their chil-
dren in the midst of misery that surrounds them, to house
them, to feed them, and to dress them in rags, he will be
astonished to find that if the amount does not reach the
figure of one hundred dollars, it does not remain far below
it, even with the most poverty-stricken classes; and the well-
to-do and the wealthy will concede that it costs them much
more than one hundred dollars annually to support and
educate one of their children. Now, what more and better
things can be given even to the child of a millionnaire than
wholesome food, clean and comfortable clothing, light and
air, and, above all, an education appropriate to his peculiar
talents and inclinations? The surplus that the well-to-do
and wealthy classes spend for the support and education of
their children, enormous as it is, is squandered, and the only
result derived from it is often that their children are made
physical wrecks, with their nerves unstrung, their intellect
over stimulated ; that morally they are depraved ; that they
become unfit to fight the battles of life ; that they enter it
with expectations which can be gratified only by means of
inherited wealth.
A plain, simple education based upon scientific methods,
which tends to develop the whole child, body, mind, and
will; which permits the natural faculties of the child, and
not fancied talents, to evolve; which does not stimulate the
mind at the expense of the body, nor fatten the body at the
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664 THE ARENA.
expense of the mind, is the right which should be granted to
eveiy child, be his parents poor or rich. It can be had at
the price of one hundred dollars per annum.
# * * * *
If it is true that education as it is offered by the orphan
asylum leads to better results than that of the home; if it is
true that such institutions can be run at an expense, per
capita, much lower than that which the poorest of people
incur, why have people been so long blind to their best
interests, and why have they never tried the experiment of
communal education ?
In ancient Sparta the education of the young was assigned
by Lycurgus to the commonwealth; philosophers of a still
later time have recommended similar measures, but we, for-
sooth, cannot copy to-day the example of a time long past,
nor could the people of those ages have formed an idea of
the acquisitions of* our day. It is only of late that it has
become possible for us to take a bird's-eye view of the whole
body of humanity, and to conceive of any socialistic enter-
prise as feasible. Even one hundred years ago such a propo-
sition and such conceptions were impossible, and had no
place in the human mind. But before I turn to the demon-
stration of the feasibility of such a radical transformation in
the rearing of the young as would be their education and
support by the community, I must answer a question which
forces itself into the foreground. If it were advisable and
possible to give to the whole youth of a city a kind of
orphan asylum education, what means can be substituted for
the beneficial influences which father and mother exert upon
the child? Or in other words, is it advantageous in all
respects to supplant home education by public education ?
May I ask the reader again to help me add some figures ?
It will be conceded by all that a child ought to sleep for
ten hours daily. During that time neither the home nor the
educational institute can exert any pronounced influence
upon it, although it is likely that dormitories may be built
to ensure more excellent ventilation, and more careful watch
over sleepers, if necessary, than most home chambers afford.
Let us add to these ten hours the five hours devoted to
schooling, during which time the child is again withdrawn
from home influences. Two hours a day is not too much to
allow for the time in which the child is on his way to and
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THOUGHTS IN AN ORPHAN ASYLUM. 665
from school, since the two-sessioH system is preferable to
that which keeps the child for five hours in succession under
mental strain. During these two hours the child is again
left to himself and away from home influences. Two hours
a day are spent at the table, during which time both parents
and children are too much occupied in satisfying the crav-
ings of the inner man to give thought to educational
matters, excepting perhaps in table etiquette and the proper
use of knives and forks. Three hours a day children should
be allowed to play. During this time parents cannot watch
because they cannot follow them into the streets or the
squares where children congregate to play. An institution
has its open and covered playgrounds, and can employ one or
several teachers to watch the pupils even when at play. If
all this is conceded and the figures are added, the reader
will find that of the twenty-four hours of the day only two
remain in which parents might fulfil their duties as educators
and might exert some influence over their children. The
poor, however, need that time sorely to recuperate the
powers consumed in daily toilsome labor, while the rich are
sometimes compelled to give that time to the demands of
society. Let us consider, too, that the average parents
understand no more of education than that which nature has
taught them instinctively. They allow many faults of the
youthful character to pass uncorrected; parental vanity
will often applaud what should receive stern rebuke, or
will punish what is not culpable at all. If all this is
summed up, it will not be difficult to see that parental
influence is a myth, not supported by facts. In a public
institution, on the other hand, the pupil does remain under
the eye of an experienced educator during the whole twenty-
four hours of the day. This educator is rarely, if ever, led
by his temper to punish, or by partiality to praise, where
punishment or praise is not appropriate and will affect the
child as foul air or a hail storm affects a tender plant.
*****
Public education is yet in its infancy. Our public schools
are very, very young, and the idea that it is the duty of
society to give to every child a complete education has not
yet fully matured. How long is it since orphan asylums
have been erected ? Who in ancient times ever thought of
the possibility of bringing up five hundred children in one
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666 THE ARENA.
institution ? Who ever thought then that an orphan has the
same right to be treated with love as has any other child ?
A child was formerly looked upon as the property of parents,
to be utilized by them — was, so to say, a day laborer,
obliged to work for his parents, receiving only board and
clothing for pay. When a child lost his parents, people were
found in every village or town who were pleased to take an
orphaned child into their family and thus to obtain cheaper
labor. It is difficult to find an orphan asylum older than
two hundred years, and what are two hundred years in the
history of human evolution ?
As long as charity flourishes at the expense of justice,
asylums which take temporary care of neglected children
will rank among the noblest charities ; but let us not ignore
some of their defects. As these institutions have not suffi-
cient means to take care of all these waifs and rear them in
such a manner that, hereafter, they may enter life with pros-
pects of success, they feel obliged to search for people will-
ing to adopt them. Hundreds of children are sent annually
to country places and especially to the West and adopted by
farmers, who promise the officers of these institutions to
take care of the children, to give them as good an education
as they can afford, and to look out for them as if they were
their own. This is the beautiful ideal, and the institutions
take pride in showing in their annual reports how they have
found homes for hundreds of neglected children. In reality,
however, the affair has a different aspect. The farmer who
finds it difficult to obtain labor at the price which he is will-
ing to pay, adopts a boy or a girl ten or twelve years old. To
board them at his table is no expense to him, and the plain
clothing that he gives them requires no large investment.
Even if the child is sent to school there are many kinds of
labor which can be performed by it outside of school hours.
After the fourteenth year they become full-fledged servants,
but without pay. They are charged even with the duty of
gratitude towards the good people who have taken them
from the street. By law their services belong to their
guardians until they have reached the age of twenty-one.
Then, unless they run away sooner, they are dismissed with
thanks, and another child' is adopted. How humane and how
charitable this is !
Owing to this mode of looking at the duties owed by
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THOUGHTS IN AN OBPHAN ASYLUM. 667
society to orphans, their treatment has been, heretofore,
rather of an official nature, lacking sympathy and love to
such a degree that parents could imagine only with a shudder
their own children obliged to take refuge in such an institu-
tion. Even the well paid boarding-school is held out to
unmanageable children as a kind of punishment. But man-
kind has ever learned by experience. We have learned that
education on a large scale is not only possible, but cheaper
and better than that which a home can give, and that, more-
over, the element of love is not necessarily excluded there-
from. In former times the rattan was considered one of the
most important means of education in the public school; yet
it has been removed, and better educational results have
been obtained since the rod was exiled and the love of a
magnetic teacher substituted for it. Orphan asylums are
now the outcome of the sentiment of duty, and hence they
are managed with love.
* * * * *
We need only remove existing prejudices to see that better
educational results can be reached when the nation or the
community undertakes to support and educate all children,
from the third to the twentieth year, precisely as it now
undertakes the education of the young up to the fourteenth
year. Even now the community compels parents to give up
their children to the school for five hours a day, from the
sixth to the fourteenth year ; if the community has the right
to keep children away from their parents five hours a day,
why should it not have the right to take them for twelve or
twenty-four hours? If it is justified in demanding that
youth shall be educated and not allowed to go to work
until they have reached the fourteenth year, why not keep
them in school to the twentieth year? If it is in fact cheaper
to supply all the pupils in the school with books at the
expense of the community, why is the idea of supplying
them also with clothing and board at public expense rejected
as preposterous ?
1 am fully aware that the time for such innovations has
not yet come, and therefore can understand why some
contemptuously smile at such propositions, while others
reject them as being harmful to society. It is true we do
not yet live in the time when people understand that a
child is neither the toy nor the slave of parents, but that
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668 THE ARENA.
parents must seek in the development of their children
the progress of all humanity. We do not yet live in the
age when it will be self-evident that the child may de-
mand rights in exchange for the duties which society
demands of him, but we are not so very far from it as
many imagine, for all our social arrangements are drifting
in that very direction. The artisan has disappeared, and
into his place has stepped the factory hand; the small work-
shop has disappeared, and in its place has come the large
factory to which the laborer is chained; the small tool has
been superseded by the intricate machine, which does the
work of a hundred hands; small stores are suppressed by
largtf ones. As an individual, man has ceased to be able to
support himself ; he has become dependent upon a place in
the community. Women are now charged with duties,
having succeeded in obtaining some rights, and this has
forced their working capabilities into new spheres. Through
these innovations all the conditions upon which life was
formerly planted have been changed. Public schools have
become a necessity, and their work is even extended to
teaching the pupil a trade. Therefore it may not be so very
long as many think before the state or the community will
feel obliged to undertake the support as well as education of
all children, precisely as orphan asylums are now maintained.
The old pillars upon which the family has rested heretofore
are one after another breaking down, and we are on the eve
of a radical transformation of all social conditions, which
will also include the support and education of the young by
the state.
The reader need not be frightened when the word " state "
is pronounced. The state is neither the president nor the
emperor; neither the secretary nor a staff of officials. The
state is you and I, he and she, we and they. The state which
is to support and educate the young is the same parents who
do it now, the only difference being that now they do it
individually, while in time to come they will do it col-
lectively; that now each endeavors to carry alone that which
hereafter all will together carry with ease.
* * * * *
During the conversation which I had with the superin-
tendent of the asylum, he called my attention to one of
the drawbacks which adhere to the system. It is light
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THOUGHTS IN AN ORPHAN ASYLUM. 669
which casts shadows. " It cannot be denied," said he, " that
the youth of a pupil in this institution is a happy one. He
receives a physical, mental, and moral development such as
the home can never give him; but in one point I have not
reached the desired success, although I have given my full
attention and much study to it. My pupils never learn to
understand the value of money, and when they enter life and
are obliged to fight their own battles, they lack sharpness
and cleverness to handle that powerful weapon. After
many defeats a few learn the tactics of the world and how to
use money. Others seek a secluded place, in which they
remain during their whole lifetime in a subordinate position.
Others finally, discouraged by ill success, yield to downright
servitude. How this evil can be cured," said the gentleman,
44 1 do not know. I have tried repeatedly to develop that
sharpness and shrewdness in the pupils of my institution
which the child brought up in the home learns from expe-
rience or by the example set by parents, but I have not
succeeded as well as I wished. Inasmuch as no room is
left in the asylum for egotism, because the children learn here
to submit to a beneficent system and inhale the idea of
equality, pupils cannot attain to that sharpness which the
grindstone of selfishness produces, and which is needed so
much in the battle for existence. If you will add to all this
that our pupils never know what worry is — that it is as
natural to them to depend upon the regularity of their meals
and the replacement of their wearing apparel when outworn
or outgrown, as it is for them to expect the return of the sun
on every new morning, you will easily find the reason why,
in spite of a better education and the better development of
all physical and mental forces, the pupils of an institution
like ours cannot compete successfully with children brought
up in the family, even in most miserable homes."
The experience of this able educator shows in a glaring
light the principal objections which can be raised against
asylums. Neither does he stand alone. Other educators,
too, have expressed their misgivings in regard to the educa-
tional limits of the orphan asylum, and experiments have
been made to devise means by which the orphan can be sup-
ported and educated without disconnecting him from practi-
cal life. Some organizations have adopted the plan of
boarding such children in private families.
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670 THE ARENA.
This very weakness of the orphan asylum hurls one of the
weightiest accusations in the face of society, however. It is
true, alas, that the right of the strong to suppress the weak
forms the foundation of modern society as it ever did that of
the past. The weak must serve the strong, whether the
force applied for the subjection of the less powerful is of
muscle or of brain or is hidden in the money bag. In former
ages the young member of society was trained to handle the
club, the spear, and the sword ; now he must be schooled in
the art of using the strongest of all weapons, money, to
suppress others and to gratify his own selfish desires. This
art must not be taught theoretically, but by means of object
lessons. In a world whose residents live in a constant fight
with one another, in spite of their bombastic and hypocritical
assurances of brotherly love ; in a world in which the success
of a human life is measured only by the accumulation of
wealth ; in a world in which the individual feels himself the
centre around which all creation turns — in such a world
there is of course no room for him whose egotism has been
kept in bounds, or who has not received the training needed
to keep his place in such a battle field of human passions.
So long as there is left to one only the choice of becoming
either hammer or anvil, the position of the anvil will remain
for the one who cannot crush another without feeling pain.
This very observation also throws a sharp light upon the
conventional lies of our civilization. In theory, on paper,
in the pulpit, on the platform, mankind is portrayed as one
family, the members of which should enjoy equal rights; in
practical life we fight tooth and nail against one another,
and acknowledge the right of the strong, the right of the
possessor. In theory we speak # of human dignity, of the
gulf that separates man from the brute; in practical life,
when obliged to fight for the crust of bread that we
need, we show greater greed than animals. In the educa-
tion of the young, as far as theory goes, we endeavor to
imbue them with the ideas of justice and truth ; in practi-
cal life, however, we are satisfied with the appearance of
virtue, since real virtues are but impediments to individual
success. The asylum, therefore, which gives an ideal train-
ing, does not fit the pupil for practical life. The asylum
teaches the individual to suppress selfishness and work for
the community, seeking his own happiness in the welfare of
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THOUGHTS IN AN 0&t>HAN ASYLUM. 671
the social body. The world applauds only him who is able
to suppress others and to make them do his will. The
asylum teaches the equality of all human beings ; the world
bows to him who possesses more than others do. The
asylum is a haven of peace in which even passions are
silenced ; the world is a battle field in which no sympathy is
shown to the defeated. In the asylum money is of no value ;
in the world it is worshipped as a king, yea, even as a god.
We have the choice between two methods to remove these
drawbacks of the asylum system of education. Either the
asylum must fit itself to the world, or the world must fit
itself to the asylum. Either the paradise of the asylum
must be transformed into a realm of strife, deceit, and
intrigue, or the world must be transformed into an abode of
peace. It is easier and recommends itself as more practi-
cable to do the first ; if, however, as in course of time will
and mui happen, the state becomes charged with the
support and education of all children, would it not be better
and more humane that the world should aim at universal
happiness, and seek it not in warfare but in peace? Would
it not be preferable that all should unite their activities and
see to it that all can live in happiness, than that by the
victory of one individual over another the welfare of the
victor involves the misery of the defeated?
Coming generations will know as a fact that which appears
to us as a theory. Will they look back upon us and acknowl-
edge that we not only hoped for a world in which peace and
happiness should be the share of every individual, but that
we even saw it in anticipation and strove to hasten " the
good time coming "?
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SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS.
BY THE LATE KICHARD A. PROCTOR.*
Among the strange fancies which have from time to time
arisen respecting the great men of the past, few seem stranger
than the thought that Lord Bacon was the real writer of the
plays which have been so long attributed to William Shake-
speare. Those who first heard of the fancy regarded it as
the idle dream of one unacquainted either with the actual
characteristics of the Shakespearean drama, or with the qual-
ity of Bacon's mind as shown in his works, or with both.
But although this may have been the case, it is certain that
the fancy has found attractions for some who should at least
have possessed the necessary knowledge to form a just opinion
on the subject. And apart from the value, small or great, of
the reasoning by which the idea has been supported, it has
been in a sense encouraged by the gravity with which it has
been encountered. For in literature, as in science, the para-
dox dies out if not attacked. A school of flat-earth men,
another of circle squares, would soon be established, if science .
did not very rigidly leave the paradoxers alone, or else —
which has been my own constant custom — deal with them
as merely affording highly interesting examples either of
what some minds are capable of imagining, or of what some
minds are unable to comprehend. For in the case of every
paradox ever advanced, there has always been some evidence
which to the ill-trained mind appears decisive, always some
circumstance to render the paradox attractive to men of
fanciful imaginations; and when in oppugning a paradox
you come across a detail which apparently favors it, and at
the same time is slightly beyond the mental grasp of the
paradoxists, your failure to explain that detail sufficiently to
show that it has in reality no such bearing as the paradoxist
imagines, appears to the weaker minded among the on-lookers
* This paper consists of a discussion of Shakespeare's plavs, written by the eminent
astronomer, Richard A. Proctor, to his daughter in 1886. Miss Proctor, while tran-
scribing that portion of these letters relating to the Shakespearean plays, has omitted
those parts which were not germane to the subject, save the closing paragraph of the
last letter, which is retained as giving a delightful glimpse of the father.— Editor
Arena.
672
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Shakespeare's plays, 673
as an admission that the paradox has something in it. A
sense of despair comes over the explainer, and his audience
interprets it to mean "that he finds his case weaker than he
supposed," — whilst in reality his feeling is, that with minds
so much weaker than he had supposed possible (outside
certain asylums), explanation is hopeless.
I suppose that no believer in the Baconian theory of Shake-
speare's plays will ever be convinced that he holds (or is
held by) a wildly impossible theory, or, indeed, be otherwise
th&n" strengthened in his faith by reasoning adduced against
it — reasoning which he is quite unable to comprehend.
He has heard a number of circumstances which undoubtedly
make Shakespeare a marvel among men — a marvel " not for
an age, but for all time," — and he has not heard, or hearing
has not understood, what would make the explanation he
seeks to substitute, much more than a marvel. He has
heard that Bacon overthrew the scientific methods of all the
ages preceding his own, and replaced them by the method
which has effected all the discoveries of modern science;
and he is not aware that all this is purely mythical, that
long before Bacon the method regarded as modern was
successfully employed by men of science, while the method
defined by Bacon never has been employed and never will
be, with any chance of success. Because Bacon, of whom
the great Harvey justly said that " He wrote of science like
a lord chancellor," claimed all science for his theme, failing
egregiously in his attempt on the sole detail to which he
applied his own method, it seems an easy thing to concei e
that he could take, at the same time, besides all his other
employments, the task of achieving the first place in
dramatic literature.
The Baconian paradoxist combines with these mistakes
the notion that Shakespeare was far too ignorant and simple-
minded a man to have been capable of writing the plays
which bear his name, whereas Bacon was a thorough scholar
— the real fact being that, except in the power of writing
rather bad Latin fluently, Bacon was a most imperfect
scholar (he was far too great a man to be scholastic). He
imagines that Shakespeare's name and fame were the crea-
tion of later days than his own; that the correct use of law
terms in Shakespeare's plays proves the real writer to have
been a leading lawyer of Elizabeth's time. And a number
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of other matters, equally mistaken or equally little germane
to the subject, readily satisfy the paradoxist that he has lit
upon a great new truth.
Shakespeare's science.
With respect to Shakespeare's science, it has been sug-
gested that several passages may be regarded as indicating
the anticipation by Shakespeare of some of the scientific
discoveries made since his day. Thus the law of gravitation
is supposed to have been suggested by Shakespeare before
Newton in the lines, —
But the strong base and building of my love
Is as the very centre of the earth,
Drawing all things to it.
It is a mistake, however, to suppose that Newton's dis-
covery of the law of gravitation was even akin to what
Shakespeare here refers to. The story of Newton and the
apple is, I suppose, responsible for the idea that Newton
indicated the action of terrestrial gravitation, which was of
course recognized ages before his time, and had been made
the subject of experimental researches by Galileo before
Newton was born. In so far as Newton's theory of gravita-
tion related at all to the earth's attraction on falling bodies,
it was entirely different from that view which in Shakes-
peare's time was commonly entertained, namely, that the
centre of the earth was the attractive part; for Newton
showed, by a series of inquiries of the most ingenious kind,
that terrestrial attraction is a property of every part of the
earth's mass, whether solid, liquid, or gaseous.
Another line, —
You may as well forbid the sea to obey the moon,
shows that Shakespeare knew, as every schoolboy probably
knew in his time, that the tides follow the moon, and that
he did not know how, depending on the law of gravity, they
follow the sun also. Newton had nothing to do with the
discovery that the tides are associated with the moon, which
had been observed by geographers many hundreds of years
before.
Again, it is suggested that the invention of the stereoscope
by Sir David Brewster may have been preshadowed in the
following lines: —
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shakespkaue's plays. 675
Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows,
Which show like grief itself, but are not so.
For sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears,
Divides one thing entire to many objects;
Like perspectives, which, rightly gazed upon,
Show nothing but confusion, — eyed awry,
Distinguish form.
But here there is a distinct and very obvious reference to an
optical trick, familiar at least as far back as Roger Bacon's
time.
I must confess I can see no reference to the true theory,
as established by Harvey, of the circulation of the blood, in
the comparison, —
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart.
It was no discovery of Harvey's that the blood visits the
heart.
Tyndall's molecular theory, again, cannot, by any one who
knows what Tyndall's views about molecules are, be associ-
ated in the remotest way with the words, —
For thou exist' st in many a thousand grains
That issue out of dust.
It seems to me impossible to find any reference to science
throughout the whole series of Shakespeare's plays which
shows more than that he had a fair though vague idea of the
crude philosophy of his day. And I must confess I should
be sorry to see the name of trie greatest poet the world has
known, associated with false claims and pretensions easily
disproved.
SHAKESPEARE AND BACON.
Comparing Bacon, the philosopher rather than the student
of science, with Shakespeare, Bacon the essayist with Shake-
speare the dramatist, we find reason to wonder there are so
few parallelisms among so many thoughts directed by the
two men to the same subject. The most remarkable feature
of resemblance lies in the fact that just as you may come,
again and again, to a scene or even a speech in one of
Shakespeare's plays, and find fresh beauties in it, so it is
with each one of Bacon's philosophical writings, and espe-
cially with his essays — every fresh reading brings out a new
feature. In the whole series of essays I have never noticed
any resemblance detailed to Shakespearean philosophy so
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striking as that in a passage outside the essays (in the " Wis-
dom of the Ancients — Endymion ") where Bacon says that
princes of thoughtful and suspicious nature " do not easily
admit to their privacies such men as are prying, curious, and
vigilant, or as it were sleepless; but rather such as are of an
easy, obliging nature, and indulge them in their pleasures,
without seeking anything further, but seeming ignorant,
insensible, or as it were lulled asleep before them." This
undoubtedly recalls Shakespeare's
Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights.
Yond' Cassius hath a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.
But such resemblances are few and far between. The
explanation, doubtless, is that Shakespeare pictured men as
they live and act and speak, Bacon as he saw them. Bacon
gives us his thoughts about men's actions and motives;
Shakespeare makes the men in his pages speak their own
thoughts about themselves and their fellow-men, who with
them act and move and have their being in the world of his
creation. *
Of Bacon's poetic power there can be no question; it is
shown, strangely enough, more in his writings about science
than anywhere else. But as a poet, in the sense in which
Homer, Virgil, and Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton
were poets, Bacon certainly shojved himself wanting. The
man who wrote of
The great leviathan
That makes the seas to seethe like boiling pan,
and sang that
Man's life hangs on brittle pins,
was certainly not gifted with the same power of expressing
his poetic fancies as the author of the " Sacred Sonnets,"
which would have made Shakespeare's name great among the
poets, even had he sought no broader, greater, or more
heroic themes.
Of Bacon's classic learning the Baconians, in what they
are pleased to call " the Bacon controversy," talk as though
he were a scholar infinitely more learned than poor Shake-
speare, with his "little Latin and less Greek." " There is no
doubt," says one, " that the author of Shakespeare was a man
of wide and accurate scholarship, and of thorough culture."
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Shakespeare's plays. 677
If so, assuredly that author could not have been Bacon.
The argument, if it has any strength at all, is nearly as
strong against him as against Shakespeare. He was not
much thought of by the college authorities as a classical
student (so ran one tradition at dear old Cambridge), and
he left Cambridge without taking a degree. His quotations
from Greek authors are never direct, but always from the
Latin translations — except one line of Homer, and that was
most probably quoted at second hand. It has been said of
him, on this account (and, with the alteration of the defining
word, the same might be said of Shakespeare), that if a didactic
author were to be named whose thoughts sprang directly out of
his own mind, Bacon must be cited. But, indeed, of Bacon's
habit of study we know little more than we do of Shake-
speare's — the evidence lies almost wholly in the results of
such study scattered broadcast through his writings. In the
long vacations, and when he could steal time from official
duties, he read laboriously, and probably he made very
copious notes, classified under proper headings; but he used
the knowledge he thus acquired rather for purposes of illus-
tration than to supply material, and he seems to have read
more for examples of style than to instruct his own mind.
Indeed, his tone, in speaking even of the greatest writers of
old times, is nearly always that of one who contemplates the
work of others from a higher level than theirs.
How Shakespeare redeemed his time, we can infer from
his poems and contemporary evidence without considering
the plays; though a study of the plays in the order in which
they were produced, affords singularly interesting evidence
of steady work and resulting progress. I suppose no one
has ever thought of attributing the "Venus and Adonis " to
Bacon, or to any one but Shakespeare himself, who gives his
name in full to the dedication. It is, indeed, impossible to
say what believers in the Baconian theory of the plays may
not have imagined — and for aught one can see they may be
able to maintain that Bacon, who sat in Parliament for Mel-
combe Regis in 1585, at the ripe age of twenty-four, and
who was returned successively for Taunton, Liverpool, and
Middlesex, in the years between 1585 and 1592, amused the
abundant leisure which his parliamentary and legal duties
and his strenuous efforts for advancement must have left
him, to write the warmest poem of love and passion which
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our language has produced ! But for others, it may suffice
to consider that Bacon's nature was cold and calculating, not
warm and passionate like Shakespeare's, and that, entered at
the age of twenty at Gray's Inn, Bacon for ten years devoted
all his energies to the struggle for place and power. Even
his anxieties about the advance of science moved him only
to produce the Temporis Partum Maximum (or " Greatest
Birth of Time"); and though perchance it may have been
very great, yet we only hear of it from a letter of his to
Father Fulgentio. Can we suppose the great philosopher —
who married at the age of forty-two the lady of his affec-
tions, after long and formal courtship — to have devoted
hours of leisure to produce, at the age of thirty-two, so burn-
ing a poem as the " Venus and Adonis," hiding his work
under the assumed name of a second-rate actor unknown to
literary fame ? Would Bacon have dedicated such a poem
to a well-known nobleman? — who, of course, must have
known of the fraud, even though Shakespeare had consented
to sell his name to Bacon. This would be to imagine Bacon
a marvel of folly and duplicity as well as of genius, and
Shakespeare — though, under the assumed circumstances, that
would count for little — as contemptible as his hirer. I sup-
pose, however, that even the believers in Bacon as the author
of " Romeo and Juliet," for example, do not imagine that he
wrote " Venus and Adonis," or that any one wrote that won-
derful — though not altogether commendable — poem, but the
young poet who dedicated it to the still younger Earl of
Southampton, his patron. We know not when it was writ-
ten, but presumably some years before 1593, when it was
published.
The importance of this one absolute certainty that
Shakespeare wrote " Venus and Adonis " is manifest. For
with all the passionate warmth of this amorous poem, the
Shakespeare of the plays is more manifest in it, than is
the Shakespeare of Coriolanus or Henry V. in the first-fruits
of Shakespeare's dramatic labors. " Venus and Adonis," be-
sides its undue warmth, has many faults of imagery, from
the first line, with its purple-colored sun, to the last, immur-
ing " Venus in her Isle of Paphos." But it is full of pas-
sages which none but Shakespeare could have written. Who
could have pictured the dejected hounds of Adonis, as in
the "Venus and Adonis," save he whose Theseus says: —
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Shakespeare's PI4AYS. 679
My love shall hear the music of my hounds
Uncouple in the western valley —
And mark the musical confusion
Of hounds and echo in conjunction.
My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind —
So flewed, so sanded; and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
Crook-kneed, and dew-lapped like Thessalian bulls;
Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells,
Each under other; a cry more tunable
Was never holla'd to nor cheered with horn.
Grant the " Venus and Adonis " Shakespeare's, and we
must yield also to him the " Lucrece " and the " Sonnets,"
as well as "The Lover's Complaint," and a large part of
" The Passionate Pilgrim." Any one who can study these
poems, and fail to feel that he who wrote them wrote also
the plays we know as Shakespeare's, and as a poet was
matched by no writer that lived in the Elizabethan age, may-
be able to attribute the plays of Shakespeare to Francis
Bacon. Such a one might, with equal sense, attribute the
poems of Tennyson to Thomas Carlyle. The amazing ease
and certainty of touch we admire in the plays are seen
equally in the poems; the combined strength and versatility
are there; the wondrous range of subjects — astronomy
(Sonnet 14), law (Sonnet 87), natural histoiy, medicine,
botany, general knowledge; and lastly, that copious vocabu-
lary which strikes us so in the plays.
Only nine days now till I shall be home again. I am a
trifle tired of this winter travelling, and the trying combina-
tion of closely packed lecture engagements with literary
work.
Best love to you, my dear daughter, from
Your ever loving father,
Richard A. Proctor.
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MEDICAL SLAVERY THROUGH LEGISLATION.
BY HENRY WOOD.
"Recognized science! Recognized ignorance! The science of to-day is the ignor-
ance of to-morrow ! Every year some bold guess lights upon a truth to which but the
year before the schoolmen of science were as blinded moles.— Edward Btdwcr
Lytton, in "A Strange Story.**
The toils of legislative restriction and monopoly are
often woven so subtly that the average citizen is quite
unaware of possible, and even present, abridgments of his
personal freedom. Under the seductive plea of protecting
him and doing a needed favor, his theoretical guardians put
him in shackles of which he is quite unaware, until the
occasion comes when liberty is desired for practical use.
Then he beats against the solid bars and finds that his
supposed freedom is a myth.
Many are not aware of the fact, that if, in any one of a
great majority of the states of this glorious, free (?) Union,
one is healed of disease by means of any treatment denomi-
nated "irregular," the person who has done him such a
service is liable to arrest, punishment, and classification as a
felon. This is a calm statement of fact and not a rhetorical
abstraction.
Under constitutional guarantees every person is entitled
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These rights
not only lie at the foundation of our national government,
but are inherent, God given, and universal. Wherever
under the broad canopy of heaven they are encroached upon,
there is tyranny. This is no less true — rather worse, rela-
tively — when done in democratic America than in "des-
potic " Russia. Old-world despotism has, at least, an honest
though hard front, while an insidious though equally cruel
oppression may wear a smiling and benevolent mask. In no
degree is this a question between different schools or sys-
tems, but of natural, individual liberty, pure and simple.
Our forefathers specially provided for religious liberty,
and had they imagined that other equally vital individual
freedom would ever be imperilled, doubtless they would also
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MEDICAL SLAVERY. 681
have particularized it. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness " most assuredly include the right of individual
judgment in regard to all those interior, sacred, personal
experiences and choices, which are entirely within man as a
social unit. Society robs one of all these when, through the
forms of law, it makes one's irregular healer — of whatever
name he or she may be — a criminal. Personal rights
which in their exercise neither conflict with nor pertain to
those of others, nor of society in general, are beyond the
province of legislation, majorities, or public control or cen-
sure. Governmental dictation regarding the style of homes,
furniture, or costumes, would be mild in quality, compared
with that which concerns life and death. No single medical
school has any more moral right to impose its peculiar thera-
peutic methods upon an unwilling individual, than a Baptist
majority in any state would have to require universal immer-
sion. Of the two, the latter might be infinitely more
pleasant as well as profitable.
Our government is founded upon the intelligence of its
citizens. Our legislators are not dictators but servants, and
every citizen is a reigning sovereign in his own personal
domain. The essence of popular government is control from
within, rather than from without. Democracy takes it for
granted that citizens are not imbeciles but free, intelligent
moral agents. Within proper limits, they are to exercise
the power of choice, and that even where the choosing may
not always be the best. Educational progress in any depart-
ment is only possible where the individal is left free — even
to make mistakes. A community shut away from every-
thing experimental would never learn anything more. Even
if a legislative majority had infallible wisdom, it would have
no right, by organized force, to thrust it into the internal
recesses of a personal life.
Were allopathy an exact science, like mathematics, the
ethics of the case would remain unaltered. If a man choose
to have any system or no system, for himself \ is the body
politic to impose one? Medical legalized monopoly ruth-
lessly tramples upon the most sacred private domain. It is
moral robbery, masquerading as humane legalism.
The position may be confidently taken, that legislative
medical coercion is not only oppressive and immoral, but
unconstitutional. It is to be hoped that some thorough test
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case from one of the monopoly-ridden states may soon find
its way to the highest tribunal of the land, on constitutional
grounds. In the whole sisterhood of states, only three —
Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island — remain entirely
free from medical usurpation. Desperate attempts to slip
on the fetters have been repeatedly made in Massachusetts,
and one quite recently in Maine, but through the vigilance
of the friends of freedom they were defeated.
The allopathic " blue laws " of the several states differ in
degree, some being very intolerent and arbitrary, and others
somewhat milder. The " Act Concerning the Practice of
Medicine " passed by the Connecticut legislature in the
spring of 1893, was more liberal than those of most other
states, owing to the remonstrances of many intelligent and
progressive people, who by much effort succeeded in getting
it considerably modified before its final passage. Space
will not allow, nor is it necessary, to examine in detail the
various laws now in force in the several states for the
" regulation " of medical practice. However they may
differ in specific particulars, their animus is one and the
same. Their temper is mercenary, selfish, and bigoted.
Without exception they are contrary to the spirit of the age,
subversive to true progress, and a disgrace to any govern-
ment that is theoretically liberal. They are belated rever-
berations from the seventeenth century.
If the secret circulars, log-rolling, and cabalistic intrigue
which were used to engineer these various acts through legis-
latures were all brought to light, they would furnish excel-
lent material for romance, founded on fact. Unsuspecting
clergymen and busy editors have often been made "cat's-
paws " to aid in pulling these medical chestnuts out of the
ashes. The average legislator, when newly invested with the
glamour of office, feels it incumbent upon him to regulate
things in general. What is he there for, but to set every-
thing right? He needs but a hint that something requires
bracing up, and he is ready to embrace the opportunity.
This is no question of allopathy versus any other " pathy."
The principles contended for tower above any and all sys-
tems. Let each have a fair field to prove itself. To shut off
opportunity is stagnation. Bar it out, and all evolutionary
progress is congealed — dead in its tracks.
Let it be noted that the vast majority of intelligent a. J
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MEDICAL SLAVEBY. 683
honorable allopathic physicians have had no hand in this
intolerant legalism. They have not only remained neutral
but, in many cases, opposed it. They have, confidence
enough in their own system to be willing that it should
stand upon its merits, without being artificially bolstered up,
and forced upon the public under the forms of law. All
honor to thousands of high-minded doctors of the old school,
who gladly accord the same liberty in the solution of the
most vital problem in human experience which they expect
for themselves. Their dependence is not upon diplomas, and
they are not the slaves of system. They are not superior to
improvement, and welcome any change that will promote
human welfare.
But there is a less numerous class of mercenary bigots
who want every one outlawed if he fail to bow before their
fetich. They dare not place their work upon the basis of
the discrimination of an intelligent public, but ask that their
" sheepskins " be made legal tender. There is no other pro-
fession or occupation that expects to have a clientage fur-
nished through governmental coercion. This is the class
that have moved heaven and earth to have the business of
healing " regulated." They are extremely anxious to have
the dear people protected from cheap quackery. No wonder
that honorable physicians, not in league with these zealots,
are concerned for the honor of their profession.
But the liberty-loving people of America will never rest
quietly until every vestige of mediaeval proscription is swept
from the statute books. There still exists an intangible but
real residuum of the same spirit which burned Bruno, im-
prisoned Galileo, and whipped Quakers. Those brave souls
were the irregulars of the past. Assumed infallibility,
whether in religion, astronomy, therapeutics, or any other
department, has always waged a warfare against progress.
When Harvey made the unconventional announcement of
the circulation of the blood, he was denounced as a heretic
and crank. Every human growth and advancement has
been born of influences outside of conventional boundaries.
Do the people need to be "protected " ? Are they incom-
petent to choose their system of healing, and do they suffer in
consequence ? There is no evidence of this in the compara-
tive mortuary records. On the other hand, some carefully
recorded experiments in certain European hospitals show a
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much larger ratio of recoveries in the same diseases where
simple nursing was administered, than where it was combined
with drug treatment.
If traditional materia medica were admittedly an exact
science, the points already made could not be contro-
verted; but is it more than a shifting system of experi-
ments? This question might be answered in the negative
!ry page upon page of positive declarations, made by the
most eminent allopathic exponents and authors who have
outgrown the trammels of system. Space will not be taken
for such quotations, for few intelligent people are unfamiliar
with them. A few names, however, may be mentioned of
men of world-wide reputations, who have spoken in most
emphatic terms upon this subject. Among them are Sir
Astley Cooper, John Mason Good, M. D., F. R. S., Dr.
Abercrombie of the Royal College in Edinburgh, Dr. Aber-
nethy, London, Dr. Andrew Combe, Dr. Alexander M. Ross,
F. R. S. L., Professor Magendie of Paris, Sir William
Hamilton, and a host of others. Some have made such
astounding assertions that to quote them would shock many
sensitive souls who are reposing in regular "practice," be-
lieving it scientific and infallible.
An eminent English physician, in speaking of the medical
" fads " of recent date, says that we have had the " purging
craze," the " sweating craze," the " vomiting craze," the
" blue-glass craze," the " Pasteur craze," the " Brown-Sequard
elixir of life craze," the " inhalation craze," the " cod liver
oil craze," and last, but not least, the " Koch tuberculosis
craze." The latest addition is the " microbe craze."
Regarding medical legislation as viewed from an ethical
standpoint, outside the profession, two or three quotations
may not be amiss. Says the Right Honorable W. E.
Gladstone : —
A man ought to be as free to select his physician as his black-
smith, for he alone is to profit or suffer by his choice. The respon-
sibility is his.
Professor Huxley, in speaking of this subject, observes: —
A large number of people seem to be of the opinion that the
state is bound to take care of the general public and see that it is
protected against incompetent persons and quacks. I do not take
this view. I think it is much more wholesome for the public to
take care of itself, in this as in other matters.
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MEDICAL SLAVERY. 685
Among much else of similar import, Herbert Spencer, in
his " Social Statics," while speaking of English govern-
mental establishment, says: —
There is an evident inclination on the part of the medical profes-
sion to get itself organized after the fashion of the clergy — moved
as are the projectors of a railway, who, while secretly hoping for
salaries, persuade themselves and others that the proposed railway
will be beneficial to the public ; moved, as all men are under such
circumstances, by nine parts of self interest gilt over with one part
of philanthropy.
Judge C. C. Nourse, an able American expounder of
constitutional law, in the midst of a powerful argument,
remarked: —
The people have intelligence enough to distinguish between a
quack and a skilful man. The theory that they have not has origi-
nated with the doctors and not with the people.
So far as is known, no demand for medical legalism has
ever originated with the people. The whole business has
been engineered among the lower grade members of " the
profession." The motive claimed is humanitarianism. Such
unselfish devotion to the interest of the people should
receive appreciation!
Citizens of the despotic governments of Germany, Austria,
and Russia have a larger medical liberty than that enjoyed
in most of the states of the American Union. The poor
man who cannot pay a fashionable fee can be accommodated
by cheaper practitioners and even apothecaries. Medical
fees average about three times as much in America as in
Germany. Our rich people do not mind this, but to many
a poor man, with a chronic invalid in his family, it is a
crushing burden.
We have also more than three times the number of
doctors, in proportion to the population, that Germany has.
As this disproportion is constantly increasing, it is an inter-
esting social problem how all are to live, unless disease
increases even more rapidly than the population. The
average person must be disordered longer, require more
visits, and at higher prices. If maladies fail to multiply,
the monopoly will have to be more absolute. The annual
crowds of graduates, with diplomas, need a field for the
exercise of their talents.
The common laws against malpractice put every one, of
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every school, who assumes to heal professionally, on the
defensive. Such laws are necessary. Under them, aoiy
recklessness or ignorant assumption is perilous to the pre-
tender. But there is no unmovable medical standard. Of
all disagreements, those of doctors are the most general and
emphatic. This is not the fault of the men but of the
system. Justice in cases of malpractice should be done
impartially, independent of school or diploma. The usual
legal requirement that every burial certificate be signed by
a regular M. D. is oppressive, and opens a wide field for
proscription and persecution. As its ostensible purpose is
only the detection of wrong-doing, the signatures to such a
document of two reputable citizens should be sufficient.
If a man chooses to die without the aid of a " regular," it is
rather severe that he cannot have an orderly burial without
his post-mortem services. This is one of the many strands
of the monopoly.
Not long since the reporter of a leading Boston daily
visited ten prominent physicians, with the self-same story of
pains and disabilities. Each diagnosed a different disorder
and prescribed a different remedy. The case of Garfield
was an object lesson in infallibility, and there have been
many later ones among noted men. The marvellous agree-
ment in detail (?) between different "experts" in legal
examinations is too well appreciated to require mention.
Why are prescriptions written in Latin — and generally
in bad Latin ? The practice was begun in a more ignorant
age, to make a profound impression of mystery and great
learning. It was a kind of charm, and the profession may
have blindly recognized that it included a real psychological
factor. Its present practical use, however, seems to be to
furnish additional chances for mistakes by druggists' clerks,
and to enable them to charge exorbitant prices for simples
disguised by formidable Latin names. The new-fangled
practice of " examination," by stripping, sounding, drum-
ming, and kneading, accompanied by tests with speculum and
stethoscope, for every trifling backache or headache, is a part
of the professional paraphernalia for making an impression.
It is another strand in the cord. However, impressions
sometimes cure. Not long since a patient, whose tempera-
ture had been taken by the usual test under the tongue, soon
after begged that it be done again, as the operation had
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MEDICAL SLAVERY. 687
greatly relieved him. One of the latest achievements in
medical science is the use of whiskey for babies to prevent
cholera infantum. This, however, has not been generally
adopted outside of New York City.
Who are the " irregulars " ? Broadly speaking, they
include the homoeopathists, eclectics, hydropathists, mag-
netic, electric, and " biochemic " practitioners, Thomsonians,
hygienists, metaphysicians, Christian scientists, mental heal-
ers, hypnotists, clairvoyants, mediumistic healers, faith cur-
ists, gospel healers, and members of the Christian Alliance.
There are also the massage, vacuum, and " grape cures," to
say nothing of the many sarsaparillas which "cure." It
would be in accord with evolutionary principles to give all
a fair field and no favors. Whatever good there may be in
each should have an opportunity to make itself manifest.
In the long run it will survive, but it should not be force-
fully deranged and retarded. The irregulars may differ in
principle as widely as the antipodes, but one thing they have
in common; it is a place in the ranks of liberty, in the
never-ending contest with legalized despotism.
In several states the homoeopaths have become so numerous
and influential that — as a matter of policy — they have been
invited to enter the monopoly. In others, the eclectics have
also been " taken in." It does not matter that theories are
entirely antagonistic, or that the allopath considers the
homoeopath a heretic, and refuses to meet him in consulta-
tion; all the same he will welcome him — when necessary —
to strengthen the monopoly. But a few years ago, and his
pretensions were ridiculed ; now he has gained social stand-
ing and must bo reckoned with. But greatly to the honor of
homoeopaths and eclectics, they have generally declined such
an unnatural alliance. In 1889 both the American Institute
of Homoeopathy and the National Eclectic Medical Associa-
tion passed resolutions in favor of medical freedom. There
have, however, been exceptions in some states and among
individual practitioners.
Legislative monopoly makes it an offence to practise heal-
ing irregularly. To cure is as much a violation of the law
as tp kill. The criminal trials of some of the guilty culprits
who have cured cases given up by regulars have been edi-
torially ventilated in past issues of The Arena. Such a
prosecution, however, is practically so much of a popular
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688 THE ARENA,
eye-opener that considerations of policy generally make It
expedient to allow the law to remain a dead letter until some
irregular makes a failure. He may cure a hundred and noth-
ing is said, but woe to him if once unsuccessful. It makes no
difference whether or not the case be desperate — if, through
solicitation, he take it and fail, persecution is let loose. Any
number of people may be allowed to die peacefully, if they
will only do it in a proper and conventional manner.
The vital question is, Shall the state step in between the
invalid and his deepest convictions and most sacred rights,
and veto them?
It is obvious that there should be a general and system-
atic effort put forth by the friends of liberty and progress
to restore the democratic principle in therapeutics. The
monopoly is strongly intrenched, but if the people can be
awakened to the real issue, the despotic mandates may be
expunged from the statute books.
The purpose of this paper is to deal with a few foundation
principles; but as organization is of the highest practical
importance, the writer is glad to have the opportunity to call
attention to a powerful instrumentality which is engaged in
the systematic prosecution of the work of medical disestab-
lishment. It is the National Constitutional Liberty League,
with headquarters at 383 Washington Street, Boston. Its
president is Professor J. Rodes Buchanan, M. D., and its
efficient secretary is J. Winfield Scott, Esq., whose address
is at the League rooms in Boston. It has on hand a great
variety of telling literature, in the shape of pamphlets,
papers, and tracts, which are sent out at low rates for distri-
bution among legislators and the public generally. Through
its agents and attorneys it will gladly co-operate with the
interested people of any state for the repeal or prevention of
arbitrary enactments. Any funds placed at the disposal of
the League will be sacredly used for the purpose indicated,
and the more means it can command, the greater work it
will be able to accomplish. These points are given inde-
pendently of any solicitation, and in answer to anticipated
questions as to the practical ways and means through which
this great reform may be carried forward.
We are informed that a thorough history of the medical
legislation of the United States is in course of preparation
by the scholarly Professor Alexander Wilder, M. D., of
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MEDICAL SLAVEBY. 689
Newark, N. J. Professor Wilder is an ex medical professor,
a competent writer, and for some time has been secretary
and editor of the National Eclectic Medical Society.
His forthcoming work will be of general interest.
It is especially to be hoped that New York will make an
effort, at the next session of its legislature, to throw off the
yoke of medical bondage and become as free as Massa-
chusetts. Such a victory by the progressive people of the
Empire State would be a great moral inspiration all along
the line. An organization, even if small in each state,
through which liberty-loving people may concentrate their
strength, seems highly desirable.
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THE SLAVE POWER AND THE MONEY POWER.
BY C. W. CRAM, M. D.
That the present condition of our country, industrially
and politically, is decidedly alarming, all good citizens
must admit. And they must desire, as clearly as pos-
sible, to understand the difficulties in the way between us
and a general diffusion of happiness and prosperity. To
achieve this purpose we must think for ourselves, and study
the cold facts of impartial political history. Subsidized
editors or other interested persons should not be allowed to
warp or shape our opinions or prejudice our views.
" One man may aver one thing, and another another," said
Lord Coke, " but the proof of the verity is the record."
With this great truth in view, I propose looking back-
ward for as close a view of the political history of our
republic as the limits of this article will allow. We will
appeal to the record for guidance.
During the administration of President Jackson, two
questions of grave import were presented for adjustment,
and the directness and vigor with which he decided them
attracted much attention. These were the nullification and
bank questions. And they were incidents of the slave power
and the money power, to which I will now call attention.
As early in the colonial history of our country as the year
1619, slaves were landed at Jamestown, Va. Subsequently
others were landed there, and at other ports, by British slave
traders. The colonists, in many instances, opposed this in-
troduction of slaves, and passed laws to prevent it. But in
the time of Queen Anne, Parliament reversed the colonial
laws, and opened every American port to slave merchants,
and the slave trade thereby received a strong stimulus.
Oglethorpe for awhile appears to have succeeded in keeping
slaves out of Georgia; but upon his departure all barriers
were broken down, and Georgia became a slave colony.
In the constitutional convention there was a strong desire
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THE SLAVE POWER AND THE MONEY POWER. 691
to liberate all the slaves. To uphold and propagate a system
of servitude was abhorrent to the noble men who were fram-
ing a new government and dedicating it to freedom. Yet
the poverty of the planters was such at the close of the war
that abolition of slavery seemed impracticable. However,
they decided that it must ultimately be abolished, and to
expedite this consummation they provided for the extinction
of the African slave trade.
Then the new ship of state was launched, with a supposed
cargo of equal rights for all men. Washington was in com-
mand, and the young republic started out to find a better
and broader way for human progress.
In consonance with this design, Virginia not only voted to
accept the Constitution, but prohibited the importation of
slaves. And in 1787, when Congress organized the North-
west Territory, the vote to prohibit slavery was unanimous.
But here a marked hiatus intervened, followed by the
germination of a desire to infuse new life into the vile insti-
tution. This disposition of slavery to recuperate seems to
have been simultaneous with the establishment of the first
national bank, in 1791. This moneyed institution opened a
national purse, and gave a strong impulse to speculation;
and as ownership of black labor was the only monopoly out-
side of the bank interest, it appeared to offer the capitalist
the most lucrative way of investment. So slavery, that had
been ebbing its life away, felt the spur of the speculative
tendency the bank had roused, and stoutly mounted upon
the flow of the tide. From that time the cupidity of the
planter tightened its hold on an institution that gave him
the ease of leisure as well as profit. Virginia became a
slave-producing state. Mississippi and Alabama were ad-
mitted as new slave states, and then came Missouri asking
for admission, and was finally admitted upon the compromise
agreement that slavery should never exist north of 36° 30'
north latitude.
Previous to the administration of President Jackson, the
South had thoroughly amalgamated all its interests with
slavery. John C. Calhoun, the leading exponent of the
institution, responding to the fulness of the fact that slavery
was capitalized labor, espoused the cause of the bank in the
financial legislation of Congress. This action was con-
sistent with his ultra slave propagandism, for whenever the
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692/ THE ARENA.
banks expanded the currency, and speculation was rife,
the influx of slaves into the new Southern states was by
the thousand. In Mississippi alone, fron 1830 to 1837, the
slave population increased ninety-seven thousand. In the
one year of 1836, a time of enormous inflation and specula-
tion, it was estimated that over forty million dollars was
invested in slaves to be worked in the new cotton states.
Mr. Calhoun, in furtherance of his schemes, had urged
South Carolina to the verge of treason by nullification of the
revenue laws. The president promptly suppressed him, and
the rebellious state remained in the Union.
Crushing nullification with an iron heel did not in the
least retard the growth of slavery. It dominated party
politics with extreme arrogance. The public conscience was
seared, and liberty put to shame. Domestic purity was
discounted, and duelling made honorable.
The high-handed methods pursued by the advocates of the
institution did not, however, go unchallenged. William
Lloyd Garrison and others took up the gauntlet for liberty
and human rights. But to obtain the public ear and rouse
the public conscience, was to move a mountain. While the
moral sentiment of the North was dormant, the interest of
the slaveholder was intensifying. The human chattels were
increasing. Slave pens were inhumanly crowded, the auc-
tion block was in constant use, and the interstate traffic
in human flesh was said to involve fifty thousand slaves
a year.
Then southern members of Congress became more aggres-
sive than before. The bludgeon became an active factor in
legislation. The party leaders plied the party lash. Social
ostracism glared upon the individual recalcitrant. Mean-
time the so-called Omnibus bill, the Fugitive Slave bill, the
Nebraska bill, and other iniquitous measures were formulated
in law.
The bloody trail of this "system of abominations" was
now rousing strong resistance to its progress. The murder
of Lovejoy, the assault upon Sumner, the deadly raids upon
Kansas, — all called loudly for reactionary measures. In
response to this call Giddings and his coadjutors were rein-
forced in the House, while Hale and Sumner found increased
support in the Senate. A political revolution was in prog-
ress, and the evolved force of new ideas burst asunder the
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THE SLAVE POWER AND THE MONEY POWER. 698
old Whig party, and from its dSbris came the nucleus of the
present Republican party.
In 1856 the Republicans of Maine elected their candidate
for governor. Later, in the presidental campaign, the
Democrats held a great meeting in Portland, at which Howell
Cobb of Georgia and Pierre Soule of Louisiana were
present as orators. At an entertainment given in honor of
the distinguished visitors the following sentiment was
broached : —
Poor old Maine
Has submitted again
To the fanatic's chain
And the liquor laws reign,
With its murderous stain.
She missed stays last Monday at top of the tide,
Went stern on to Wells beach, knocked a hole in her side,
And strained every timber;
But fourth of November
Old Buck and Breck
Will examine the wreck
And fit her and float her and sail her anew,
Discharging two thirds of her lubberly crew;
Replacing the milk-sops with trustworthy tars
Who will never abandon the stripes and the stars.
The superb effrontery with which those men posed as the
special champions of the flag of their country is well dis-
closed in the above lines. All who opposed them were
" fanatics " or " disunionists." Yet at that time military
companies were drilling all over the South in order to
destroy the republic if they failed to control it.
As history repeats itself, we may find the same dangerously
masked elements to-day — bold conspirators charging con-
spiracy on others. But slavery fell. With political blind-
ness it resolved to rule or ruin. It could do neither, and
went down forever as a result of its criminal folly, carrying
with it the dead bodies of a million brave men.
We erased all law that welded property to human flesh,
but have we, since that time, taught men their rights and
how to maintain them? Have we increased the intelligence,
elevated good morals, diffused happiness, crowned labor, and
banished poverty ? No. We have simply made a change of
rulers. We deposed the limited slave power, to install in it i ;
place the unlimited money power, which has for ages beeu
the God-defying tyrant of the world.
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694 THE ARENA.
This money power, with its malign influence in our repub-
lic, is as old as our Constitution. " If America adopts our
system of finance," said Pitt at the close of the Revolution of
1776, "her boasted liberties will be but a phantom." The
founders of our Constitution did not adopt it directly, but
Hamilton, as the leader of the Federalists, fastened it upon
the people through unconstitutional legislation, and we now
see the voracious plant in the vigor of its full bloom, with
British influence dominating social and political as well as
financial interests.
What is this system of finance? It is the specie basis
system that had its origin with the Bank of England in 1694.
It is the pretended use of money with the legal quality of
money left out, the bank holding one dollar in gold for the
redemption of about twenty dollars of the u promise to pay"
paper that it loans to the people. This paper, not a full
legal tender by law for debt, which the banker puts out for
money, is practically his note of hand — an evidence of in-
debtedness on his part; yet he draws interest upon it, and
gets rich upon his debts. This anomalous situation rep-
resents only a portion of his advantage. It is a law of
finance that in proportion to the amount of money circulat-
ing will be the amount of business transacted and the rate of
pricey paid. In view of this the banks, having a monopoly
of the right to issue paper money, can increase the issue and
expand the currency to an extent that makes speculators
wild in the promotion of illegitimate business schemes. Then
they can call in their loans and refuse to make new ones,
and, by greatly contracting the currency, wreck enterprise
and create a widespread panic in all business pursuits save
that of banking. With business at a standstill, the bankers
can foreclose their mortgages and make purchases at low
prices; then they can again put out more money, inflate
prices, and sell their purchases at a large profit. Wages, the
demand for labor, the price of farm products, the condition
of trade, the spirit of enterprise — all are directly or indi-
rectly at the mercy of the coterie of men who issue the
currency and direct the finances of the country.
That the founders of our republic, fresh from the bloody
field where they had buried the political dominion of King
George III., should look with complacency upon this kingly
monster of coin-credit finance, invite it here and submit to
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THE SLAVE POWER AND THE MONEY POWER. 695
its soulless domination, is without parallel as an act of
egregious folly and stultification.
While the word slave, so offensive to free men, was
excluded from the Constitution, the earnest advocates of
slavery advanced their standard till it imperilled the life
of the nation. So, while the preamble to the Constitution,
and the delegated powers that appear on its face, have not
one word of authority for grant of charter to a corporation,
the adherents of this vicious relic of barbarism and spoliation,
this feudal coin-credit finance, were vigilant and powerful,
and, as already intimated, the sod was scarce formed on the
colonial grave of British power when the charter for the
first national bank was granted by Congress.
The upas of the money power had taken root in the rich
soil of the new republic. The slave power was one of its
branches. In the North capital controlled labor. In the
South capital owned labor. The East India merchant, like
the slave trader, had been actuated by an unholy desire for
lucre. The banker, like the slaveholder, desired to live at
other men's expense, and this poisonous tree grew apace.
Its towering body confronted all enterprise and all industry
in the North, while its southern branch cast a dismal shadow
wide from gulf to main.
That the evils of this branch, that the chains and un-
requited toil of the slave, should arouse the indignation
of the northern people, was because slavery had become local
and appealed to sectional prejudices. The political wrongs
begotten of money through organized capital were general,
were deeply masked, were incidents of every-day life, and
went almost unchallenged up to the administration of
President Jackson when the charter of the second national
bank expired.
At that time the bank influence had made much prog-
ress at Washington. It was the only powerful moneyed
monopoly. Congress was its pliant tool, a subsidized press
was eager to do its work, and a cursory glance gave it
credit for complete control of the situation. This view did
not include the measurement of Andrew Jackson. Con-
gress had passed an act to recharter the bank, but he had
not signed it. Would he do so? His cabinet advised him
to do so. Could he take such a course and not violate
his oath to support the Constitution ? Was not the bank an
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696 THE ARENA.
insidious enemy of the people ? British in habitat, it was
originally pampered into opulence by official duplicity and
corruption. ■ And had it not sought America to accomplish
by covert intrigue what British arms had failed to do in the
arena of war? True, the Whigs had adopted it in its
foreign guise and had nursed it into vigorous life on the
bosom of the republic. Were not the Whigs the custo-
dians of the principles of the old Tories? Though the
president had been deserted by a majority of congressmen
and by a majority of his cabinet, and was harassed by a
bitter and relentless press, would he weaken and quail in
the presence of this gigantic but domesticated enemy of
liberty ? Instead of this, it was in proportion to opposition
and the perils that surrounded him that he arose to the full
mastery of the bank position. Danger could not turn him
from the pathway of duty, or corruption undermine and
thwart his purpose.
Sir Robert Walpole was an eminent advocate of corrupt
practices. He lived best and thrived most in an atmos-
phere of political rottenness. With him "Every man has
his price" was a choice maxim. This rascally principle,
when put to a test, sometimes fails. It was so in the case
before us. Had the bank put every dollar of its thirty-five
million dollars of capital stock at the feet of the president
as a bribe, it would not have purchased his signature to
a renewal of its lease of life.
In searching for the means by which the bank had
influenced Congress to vote for a renewal of its charter, it
was discovered that the bank had loaned to congressmen the
following sums : —
In 1830, to fifty-two members $192,161
In 1831, to fifty-nine members 322,199
In 1832, to forty-four members 478,069
In 1833, to fiftv-ei<*ht members 374,766
In 1834, to fifty-two members 238,586
$1,605,781
This is a total greater than the aggregate salaries of all
the members of both houses of Congress during those five
years.
That such a moneyed institution — a bank corporation
without soul, with twenty-five branches and tremendous
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THE SLAVE POWEK AND THE MONEY POWER. 697
powers for evil — should be able to buy its way to the verge
of regal power in a free government where equal rights are
guaranteed to all, was enough to make a patriot sick at
heart. It seemed within reach of unlimited power, but a
Jackson was in its way. The bank was a Louis Grayle
seeking renewed life, and the president was a Haroun of
Aleppo. Unlike the latter, the president resolved to act
upon the aggressive. Refusing all overtures for personal
profit, he defied malice and trampled upon policy. Then
with the club of the veto he struck down the bank without
mercy. He followed with the removal of the government
deposits, and the rights of the people, for a time at least,
were comparatively safe.
But the vile system from which this national institution
sprung was still alive, and state banks became more numer-
ous than before. These state banks, however, were not
associated, and their power for evil was thereby vastly less.
Of the second national bank Senator Benton said: —
Jackson has not killed the bank. She is a wounded tigress, and
has escaped to her jungles. By and by she will return and bring her
whelps with her.
The truth of this prediction was verified at the com-
mencement of our late civil war. To meet the need of
money for purchase of war supplies and the payment of the
soldiers, the administration, with Mr. Lincoln president,
issued government notes directly to the people with whom
they were dealing. This was by law of Congress, and the
notes were made a full legal tender.
This was true American policy. It was the only course
contemplated by the Constitution. The power to make and
issue money had been bestowed upon Congress alone, and
it had no given right to exercise this power save in the
interests of the whole people. Congress saw and did its
duty promptly, and all the machinery of the government
was clearly running with constitutional precision in the
suppression of the Rebellion.
Bankers and capitalists did not so regard the political
situation. Other men's necessity is simply their oppor-
tunity. War, with its most direful carnage, has always
opened up to them a pecuniary feast. The horrors incident
to mangled flesh and bodies dead, that appall a brave but
sensitive and conscientious manhood, are to them only
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698 THE ABENA.
mental stimulants — harbingers of the golden millions they
hope to reap as war's ungodly taxes. So as soon as the
bankers could formulate their plan, they pressed upon the
administration a demand for a complete change in financial
methods. To them the Constitution was null. Their demand
was the scream of the tigress.
Those men wanted a national banking system and a
funding system adopted. The two would dovetail together
wonderfully well to their advantage. That this scheme
might sparkle in its brilliancy from their standpoint, they
demanded the demonetization of the greenback. This
effected, they would immediately have a double opportunity
for speculation; and as years rolled by, their chances for
accumulating wealth would multiply like the stars at even-
tide. There would be hundreds of millions, aye, billions
upon billions in the scheme. Yet the gain of the banker
would be the loss of the people. It was a plan, the most
colossal ever known, for public robbery. More than this, it
was a plan to obliterate the fundamental principles of the
Constitution and practically enslave all the people save the
capitalistic class. Did President Lincoln, sworn to support
the Constitution, arouse all his energies for that purpose?
No. In the presence of those despoilers of human rights he
exhibited the simplicity of a child rather than the towering
strength of a political Hercules. Yet his executive duty
was as clear as the sunlight.
There is no basis in the Constitution for a charter for
special privileges. The spirit of a private corporation is
alien to its whole purpose. If this is questioned, the doubt
can be settled by recurrence to the debate upon the subject
in the constitutional convention. When the original draft
of the Constitution was presented to that body for consid-
eration, it contained, among its enumerated powers, one for
the erection of corporations. This clause was debated and
stricken out. It was then proposed to insert the power to
establish specified corporations, among them a national
bank. This was opposed and rejected, and there the sub-
ject remained.
This is history, and Mr. Lincoln was, or should have
been, cognizant of it. Be this as it may, he seems to have
acceded to all the demands of the bankers, practically abdi-
cating in their favor as far as the finances were concerned.
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THE SLAVE POWER AND THE MONEY POWER. 699
Then their full scheme was elaborated and consummated
with all possible despatch. This necessitated a prolongation
of the war, for Wall Street and its minions, through future
years, could only fatten upon its proceeds in proportion to
the mountain of debt that the mighty contest would force
upon the people.
Then law followed law for the expansion of capital and
the impoverishment of the people. The first congressional
act in this line was the debasement of the greenback by
restricting its legal tender quality. This created a premium
upon gold, and as it advanced in value the greenback of
necessity depreciated, and the bankers, speculating at either
end of the line, amassed hundreds of millions of dollars at
the people's expense. Then came the funding system and
the national banking system as the upper and nether mill-
stones of the money power, followed by other enactments in
the same line, and thirteen years of currency contraction
that wrecked property and led to the closing of stores and
manufactories, the foreclosing of mortgages by the thousand
and the turning a multitude of working men out into the
street as tramps. Ruin was widespread, and poverty, like a
nightmare, harassed the honest yeomanry of the whole
country. We had put down slavery of one form only to
offer our necks for the yoke of another.
From the close of the war the money power has had an
unbroken march of conquest. If we give to Congress a close
but impartial view we shall see but one purpose — to legis-
late to make the rich master richer and the poor worker
poorer. The law of the income tax was the only exception
of importance, and this was repealed as soon as the capitalists
could marshal their lobby for that purpose. Year by year
the centralization of power adds force to its menace, and the
prospective laws contemplated by our present Congress rise
above all others in their approach to imperialism.
When President Jackson struck down the second national
bank it was the only powerful monopoly in the country.
Now they troop before us till the whole land is blackened
by their shadow — railroads, national banks, telegraph lines,
telephone lines, express companies, oil companies, insurance
companies, land companies, and a score of other powerful
organizations, all banded together and protected by a cordon
of trusts that are ironclad in their shield of privileges.
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700 THE AHENA.
Money is the arbiter, organized capital the constitution to
be consulted. Caucuses are controlled by agents of the
monopolies, and "fixed" candidates are elected to office.
To create wealth by legislation, the public interests are
waylaid without mercy; corporations water their stocks,
and mining properties and manufactories are " tied up "
to freeze out their weaker holders of stock. The press
is subsidized, public sentiment is debauched, our courts of
justice are corrupted, and official integrity is put to shame.
" Business " is the national watchword, and honor is trailed
as i a byword. Years ago our public sentiment applauded
and our navy boldly maintained the announcement, " Mil-
lions for principle, but not one cent for tribute." But since
the late war our people have paid over five billion dollars as
direct tribute to the money holders who have taken the
place of the slaveholders.
The black slavery that was based on ownership of the
person, involved support of the person. Care, food, cloth-
ing, medical attendance — all were furnished by the owner
who was interested in the maintenance of the value of his
slave. It was a case of property to be protected and pre-
served; but the white slavery of to-day does not involve
the support of the unfortunate people who, lashed by
necessity, toil early and late to enrich their lordly task
masters.
The farmer, oppressed by the contraction of the currency
and low prices for his products, crowded by the mortgage
and high rates of transportation, and hampered by the board
of trade, must sell as he can, while he is obliged to buy at
such prices as are demanded, paying high tariff tribute.
The wage-worker, obliged to sell his labor for the support of
himself and family under capitalistic control, must face and
contend with conditions even worse than those that surround
the farmer. Professional men, and especially business men,
are much restricted in their pursuits, while they are con-
tinually taxed, crowded, and in hundreds of cases ruined
for the enrichment of their capitalistic plunderers. It has
been estimated that the farmers of Nebraska lost ten million
dollars last year. Take the farmers and laborers of the
whole country, and it is safe to say that, in the aggregate,
they did not save a dollar.
Against this poverty looms up the tremendous bulk and
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THE SLAVE POWER AND THE MONEY POWER. 701
power of the fortune secured by the railroads of the country
during last year, their net income, as given in their own
reports, being nearly four hundred million dollars — more
than the whole assessed value of the great state of Iowa,
exclusive of the value of its railroads. Yet the railroad
represents but one of the many forms of incorporation by
which the money power is sucking up the life blood of the
nation.
Now, " What will you do about it ? " Civilization, honest
purpose, brotherly fellowship, preservation of chartered
rights, and service to God — all prompt us to heroic
efforts at relief.
What is the one thing most needed? An honest and
intelligent vote. Black slavery was toppled over, and its
power forever erased, by red-handed war, but the ballot box
is the avenue through which we should attack and over-
throw the money power and free ourselves from the curse of
white slavery. This purpose necessitates an amended Con-
stitution.' No relief can come through either of the old
parties. There must be a new deal. New men must come
to the front about whose shibboleth there is no uncertainty
— men who cannot be bribed or palsied with a cry of alarm.
Twenty-five years ago we cut off a branch of this tree of
evil. May a true Christian endeavor speed the day when
its gigantic body shall be uprooted and destroyed !
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KNOWLEDGE THE PRESERVER OF PURITY.
BY LAUKA E. SCAMMON.
The article " Innocence at the Price of Ignorance," in the
July issue of The Arena, goes far to meet a strong ethical
demand of the hour. In it Rabbi Schindler gives clear and
forcible expression to wholesome truths which have eithei
been suppressed altogether or distorted into monstrous
falsehoods.
It is quite possible for the mind to be of true and good
intention, and yet to entertain ideas which are false and bad.
The accepted ideas, confusing ignorance of the laws of repro-
duction with the moral quality of innocence in relation to
them, are certainly all wrong; yet this mediaeval heritage of
error so entails that the most emancipated among us must
hesitate to declare himself altogether independent of it.
Public opinion has not been directly assailed for its mistakes
upon this subject, but it is nevertheless true that an under-
current of feeling has set so strongly in the direction of
rational enlightenment for our youth that the right word
might at any moment unlock an undreamed-of sweep of
eloquence, a tide that would carry before it many time-
sodden superstitions and absurdities.
The young woman who marries in infantile ignorance of
all that pertains to her future as a wife and mother, is no
longer lauded as a " sweet innocent " by the members of her
own sex. On the contrary, thoughtful women everywhere
are discussing in little back-parlor circles the dire results of
this once vaunted ignorance, and are devising means for
opening the eyes of this very young woman to its train of
wretched consequences to herself, to her husband, to their
unborn children, to the world. Nor is consideration for her
companion excluded from their counsels, for she is to become
a wife and mother no sooner than he a husband and father;
moreover, while she has everything to learn, he also has much
to unlearn. They are comparing notes, these quiet, home-
702
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KNOWLEDGE THE PRESERVER OF PURITY. 703
keeping women, and right staunchly are they holding them-
selves and each other to the task of teaching to young
humanity all the truths of human genesis, in terms unmis-
takably simple and scientifically exact.
It is these women who will welcome most heartily Rabbi
Schindler's vigorous protest against the popular exaltation of
that fragile innocence which rests upon no better foundation
than ignorance; and they will bless the hand, at once delicate
and bold, that has exposed its flimsy character, and at the
same time laid the cornerstone of a nobler, surer structure.
The courage of such a stroke is contagious; may it infect
many another with the high resolve to perform deferred
duties in the same direction.
This is the situation: The youth of the world — which in
years so few will l>e all there is of the world — young men
and women, girls and boys and little children, have been
taught falsehoods, when they have been taught anything,
about the most intimate facts of their physical being and
their most important relations to each other. Ignorance,
we have assured them, is most praiseworthy; knowledge is
destructive of innocence; the truth is a guilty secret.
They have become possessed, as we knew they would, of
more or less knowledge, partly instinctive, partly obtained
from clandestine sources; and this knowledge — if we dare
to dignify by that name the illicit mass of hint and hearsay
and half-formed opinion — every fact known or inferred, is
smirched with secrecy, deception, and suggestion of evil. If
The lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies,
what is it here, where distorted, foully bespattered and
stained with sensuality, it yet is enveloped in the vague
fascinations of a pilfered pleasure ? That stolen fruit is
sweet seems especially true of the apple of the tree of
knowledge.
Rabbi Schindler is ready to grant that the questions
which childish ignorance will ask must await answer until
the understanding and judgment have ripened with years.
Thus the child must grow to maturity in ignorance of the
chief laws and needs of his being; and it is here, and here
only, that thoughtful mothers will take issue with him. This
must not be granted. It is knowledge alone that can main-
tain in our young people the very virtue, for the preserva-
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704 THE ARENA.
tion of which we have preached ignorance; knowledge alone
that can induce in them the love of innocence and of her
infinitely nobler and sweeter elder sister, purity.
Instruction regarding the simplest physiological fact
affecting their relations to each other is imparted to persons
who have reached maturity with a difficulty which reveals
the density of the false sense of shame in which the subject
is shrouded — a guilty, sneaking mock modesty which well
may warn one who attempts such deferred instruction that
the mission has been accepted too late for its best fulfilment.
It may not be an easy task to meet the children we have
deceived — even through mistaken kindness — to acknowledge
our cowardice, to recant the thousand and one skulking sub-
terfuges, if not open falsehoods, to strip from facts all un-
wholesome marvels and false allurements, and present the
simple, clean, living truth. Indeed, of all the dragons which
a good father and mother may encounter in the jungle paths
of parental duty, I know not one with a sharper tooth. But
will it be an easier task to meet our youth when, bereft of
all that makes youth lovely, they raise suffering eyes and
the accusing cry, u Why did you not tell me ? "
An article upon the " Questions of Children," translated
from the German for the Popular Science Monthly for June,
says : —
A child whose questions are not answered by its parents will
either turn to others who are willing to gratify its desire for knowl-
edge, but who, perhaps, are unable to distinguish between what is
good for a child to know and what is not, or else it will lose its fine
natural susceptibility and learn to look upon life in a dull, spiritless
way, without interest or curiosity. Worse, however, than not
answering a child's questions is to ridicule them. Nothing wounds a
child so deeply as finding its inexperience abused, and its earnestly-
meant questions made the subject of mockery.
And the author further declares that in questions usually-
considered foolish, the folly is not with the child, but with
the older person who fails to understand how a child's mind
works. And the writer who could see these truths can yet
give, on the next page, the following example of questions
from a little child met in proper fashion by the parent, that
is, by herself : —
" Mother, does the angel who brings the little babies carry them
in a box or just in his hand ? "
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KNOWLEDGE THE PBESEBVEE OP PURITY. 705
Unprepared for this question, I answered hesitatingly, "No, not
in a box."
u But they have dresses on, haven't they ? "
"No, darling; the little babies come naked into this world."
" But then, mother, how can the parents tell whether it is a girl
or a boy ?"
Once more I am at a loss, but make out to say, " Oh! we see that
in their faces."
The little one is satisfied for the moment, for she turns again to
her toys. Suddenly an idea strikes her: —
u Mother, father said the other day that I have the face of- a boy.
Perhaps I am not a girl at all."
This time I can answer without hesitation, " No, dear, you are
certainly mother's own dear little girl; but now don't ask any more
questions, but come and help me to bake in the kitchen."
This conversation, full of acknowledged incapacity, eva-
sion, and implied falsehood, is given by one of the most
cultivated minds of the day, translated by another, and pub-
lished by one of our best reviews as an example of the kind
and correct treatment of children in regard to such ques-
tions! Is it not time for public lessons in truth-telling?
My friend's nine-year-old son said to her last Sunday:
" Mama, I don't want to hear any more Bible stories. There
isn't any Santa Claus, and there isn't a single stork in this
country; and just as likely as not there never was any
Jesus." Did not my friend wish that she had told her child
the truth?
Women are accused of making every issue a personal one ;
but what stronger argument can be presented for a given
course than that of individual success therein ? At the
entrance of an unfrequented way, hedged in and beset with
fantastic terrors, what better encouragement can be offered
than a helping hand and a hearty voice that can say :
"Come, where I walk you may walk. The way seems
barred and barbed, but the bolts are tinder, the spikes are
tinsel, the barbacan itself is a bubble ready to burst at the
first honest, well-drawn breath; and beyond this bristling
bugaboo are endless super-compensating delights." This is
not an attempt at a philosophical essay, though there is
demand for such, too, for the full illumination of this sub-
ject; but to those mothers who fear demoralizing results
among children from instruction in the natural laws that
govern the reproductive function, I would like to speak a
few plain words from the pages of my own experience.
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706 THE AKENA.
The life of American children is free and unrestrained —
too unrestrained, many of us believe, for their highest
development, since only the best-disciplined souls make
wise use of absolute freedom; but shield and sequester them
as best we could, we should not be able to shut away from
our children all outside influences. In one way only can we
hope to protect them from physical disaster and moral
contamination — and that is by arming them with early and
thorough instruction in all the physiological facts pertaining
to themselves as human beings. If distinctions may be drawn
where all seems most vital, it may be said, perhaps, that for
the girl the dangers of ignorance are more physical, for the
boy more moral.
That girls do sometimes pass the entire period of maiden-
hood without a single intelligent physiological idea, is too
true; that they, and even their mothers, have been known to
boast of this imbecility is equally true and more deplorable.
It is a shockingly common thing to hear a neuralgic, nerve-
wrecked woman date back a dead-weight life to the ignorance
of her fourteenth year. How many households join in the
sad refrain, " We lost our first baby," — " and through my
ignorance," moans to her heart the stricken mother, whose
smile is never again the unclouded sunshine of that home;
and oh ! how often has the tragic end of a bright young life
sounded in the words, " Mother and babe were buried in one
grave."
If innocence and ignorance are synonyms, there are no
innocent boys. To the best of my belief, no boy of sound
mind and possessed of the normal masculine craving to
" know what is going on," attains the age of twelve years
without having his curiosity with regard to the origin of his
physical being satisfied, or at least appeased. With those
boys who attend the public schools the age may be regarded
as certainly two years younger. This quasi knowledge,
coming to the boy from companions gomewhat older than
himself, who yet feel that the little they know is more than
they have any right to know, is imparted in dark corners,
under smother of tight bed covers, by means of whispered
hints and guesses; it is veiled in the dark and awful mystery
which boys innately love, and glimpses only are afforded by
the youthful hero who has taken captive this dragon-guarded
secret. Or it comes in coarse, unchaste language from low
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KNOWLEDGE THE PRESEEVEE OF PURITY. 707
and untaught dependents, a shock from which his finer sensi-
bilities will never recover; or by vulgar jests and tales of
double entendre from foul lips, it may come in form so hide-
ously false, so indescribably vile and depraved, as to soil the
soul of the boy past any earthly power of purification.
Will any sane mother run such perdition risks for her
son? Dare she maintain that she has not the courage to
teach him the art of self defence against the streams of
molten hell fire these devils of the pit would pour into his
ears?
Dear young mother, conserver of innocence, promoter of
purity, diffuser of sweetness and light, listen to my simple
advice. Talk to your little children, the girl and the boy
alike, about the great and precious gifts which nature holds in
her choicest treasure box, his and her own pure, sweet baby
body. Begin so soon and so simply that neither they nor
you will remember the time — and certainly before the for-
mation in the childish mind of false notions that could inter-
fere with the most perfect freedom.
Do not, at first, enter into long explanations, but teach
from nature's simple and pretty lessons. Take them among
the leguminous plants of the garden; hold in your hand the
ripened pod, and point a lesson from its protection and de-
hiscence. Lead them through orchard paths when the
boughs are ablur and the air adrift with the scented snow of
falling bloom; show them the bud, the blossom, the formation
of the tiny emerald sphere within the folded leaves — leaves
that have performed their part and may fly if they like, now
that the lusty young fruit no longer needs protection from
frost or blast, and can develop without their further aid.
Soon the lessons may proceed from the vegetable to the
animal kingdom. Here they will learn the use and not the
abuse of the procreative faculties. They will observe the
manifestations of instinct unguided by reason, and may 1x3
led to recognize in themselves the power of reason to guide
and govern instinct* Give them pairs of pets of various
kinds — birds, dogs, rabbits, kittens; and let each become
the sympathetic accoucheur when little, furry, four-footed
babies are born, and observe that even the lady crab in her
glass globe pales with the pangs of parturition. When ques-
tions arise that cannot be answered by observation, reply to
each as simply and directly as you answer questions upon
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708 THE AKENA.
other subjects, giving scientific names and facts, and such
explanations as are suited to the comprehension of the child.
It is possible that this course of instruction may open your
eyes to some defects and mistakes of your own education.
It did mine.
Treat nature and her laws always with serious, respectful
attention. Treat the holy mystery of parenthood reverently,
never losing sight of the great law upon which are founded
all others — the law of love. Say it and sing it, play it and
pray it into the soul of your child, that love is lord of all.
Thus under your guidance will nature unfold her sweetest,
most fondly cherished secrets, and your dear child, your boy
as well as your girl of ten or twelve years, will have arrived
quite simply and naturally at a full knowledge of all the
laws of reproduction. His fancy may linger over the pre-
natal days; he may picture himself as tying a fledgling with
folded wings in his sheltered nest, soft brooded in mother's
very bosom, lulled by her loving heartbeats, sung to sleep by
the rhythm of her sweet pulses. Is there a stain upon his
white soul for the knowledge that sets it to such music?
Would you exchange this knowledge for the " innocence " of
the boy who has been forced to abandon his belief in flying
angels, in saddlebags or storks, and in their stead has accepted
the garbled obscenity of the stable or the street?
The innocence of ignorance is at best untried — a virtue
of weak and flabby sinew ; do not trust to it, dear young
mother. Believe, rather, that when you have given your
child every possible opportunity for knowledge of the work
of procreation, when you have answered the how, the why,
when, and where of his eager young mind to the best of your
ability, you have but dfime your simple duty. What are you,
frail little human mother, that you should dare to conceal or
distort the high and holy lessons which the great all-mother
would teach ?
And believe this also — when you take your little children
by the hand and lead them, as you so s*ely and safely may,
into all the paths of knowledge, you will feel, as I have felt,
such tightening of the tender bonds of love as nothing else
can bring, such perfect confidence as nothing earthly can
break.
Do not fear that your child, how young soever he may be,
will shame you and himself by a show of knowledge out of
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KNOWLEDGE THE PBESERVEB OF PUBITY. 709
season; he will do nothing of the kind. If you have caught
the true spirit of nature, he will love and respect her
secrets. Moreover, it is marvellous to what a degree the
judgment of a child may be developed by showing him your
reliance upon it.
Thus armed with a high and noble understanding of his
own nature and his relations to his kind, your child is proof
against the common forms of temptation from evil com-
panions. He has, for one thing, constantly increasing
sources of interest in the myriad forms of natural growth
and development, which leave never a dull or an idle hour
for Satan to seize upon. For the neglected child, as he
deems one whose knowledge of nature's methods is made up
of a few hints and a guess or two, he feels a pity charged
strongly with contempt; and the pity changes all to con-
tempt for the stupid, vulgar youth who thinks obscenity
amusing. As for a vile story, or one that offends his fine
reverence for parenthood, your boy will flee the telling or
thrash the teller.
But, sweet, lovely young mother, you must know whereof
you speak. Temptations inhere in the nature of every child
of woman born ; and to teach your children self guardianship
from foes without and foes within, no shred of false shame
must be suffered to screen from you the exact truth, both as
regards them and the world in which they must freely
mingle. The infancy of the world is past. They who
would not live in vain and die in remorse cannot lie on
flowery banks in the soft innocence of Eden. The shut-in
peace of paradise is not to be had by us at any price. The
trail of the serpent is all too visible; to ignore it is to shut
our eyes while the thing of evil coils in our path. We must
cast aside childish ignorance and fear, and stand erect in the
full power of womanly purity.
Mothers of the New Era, what shall be our emblem?
Not an angel with white wings folded across her eyes, but a
Lady with a Lamp ¥
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IS LIQUOR SELLING A SIN?
BY HELEN M. GOTTGAR, A. M.
When a writer can defend a bad cause with the marked
ability displayed by Mr. Brown, his arguments are worthy
of thoughtful attention.
The gentleman tells us that he was reared by Christian
parents, and is a believer in Christ and the inspiration of the
Scriptures. He says: —
I have been in the wholesale whiskey business for more than
twenty-two years; and if I accept as true the denunciations made
against all engaged in my business, by a large organization of men
and women, who assert their superior piety and style themselves
Prohibitionists, I must be a person wholly given over to evil and
entirely without moral guidance.
He then arraigns the Prohibitionists for u banding them-
selves together for the expressed purpose of suppressing the
manufacture and sale of alcoholic stimulants, at any cost to
our civil find religious rights, or at any financial loss to those
engaged in the manufacture and sale of alcohol." He quotes
from the Methodist " Book of Discipline," which arraigus the
traffic as a sin, and adds, with much fairness, that if these
things held by the Prohibitionists and Methodists, as well
as " many other churches," are true, there is no question but
that the liquor traffic should be crushed, even though in
doing so many men engaged in the business should be
destroyed with it.
He then proceeds to question whether the liquor traffic
can be righteously legalized, and to determine, What is sin ?
He speciously asks, " Is it doing what any particular society
of men prohibits, or failing to do what they require ? "
Certainly not. Christians look alone to the law of God for
the definition of sin; no man nor organization of men can
create laws to define sin.
Let me assure the gifted writer of a fact which he seems
to have overlooked, that Prohibitionists make no pretence to
* Reply to George G. Brown, in July Arena, on " Christ and the Liquor Problem."
710
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IS LIQUOR SELLING A SIN? 711
extra piety, and are not necessarily Christians, though all
Christians must, in the very nature of the case, be Prohibi-
tionists. This is certainly true of those churches which
have declared that "To license is sin," and any such
church that continues a man in its membership who votes for
license or legislates for it, who manufactures, sells, buys or
drinks alcoholic stimulants, is inconsistent in its declarations
and conduct. A Prohibitionist, on the contrary, may be a
Christian or an infidel, a teetotaler or a drunkard; the only
test required is that he vote a straight, uncompromising
Prohibition ticket.
The chief concern in this discussion is, Is liquor selling a
sin ? If it is, then this wholesale liquor dealer must repent
and leave his business, or be an unworthy follower of • Christ
whom he professes. If it is not a sin, then the Prohibition-
ists and Methodists and " other churches " should apologize
to all dealers in liquor, to all who sustain it by their votes,
and to those who use it, and at once cease tjieir warfare
upon the traffic. They should, in harmony with the numer-
ous Biblical quotations of the gentleman, and his interpreta-
tions thereof, stock up their wine cellars and invite men
from the highways and hedges to partake, even taking care
that the children of their households be taught to use liquors
in moderation, instead of the present demand of total ab-
stinence. I take it for granted that all, whether engaged in
the liquor business or banded together for its suppression,
desire to know the way of truth, for God says, "And ye
shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."
Like the inquiring gentleman, I accept the orthodox and
well-established definition that "Sin is any want of con-
formity unto or transgression of the law of God."
He then quotes five different passages of Scripture from
the old dispensation, in which the Lord permitted wine
among the tithe offerings, and "wine and strong drink" as a
beverage, and concludes from this that the wholesale liquor
business, as carried on by him and others, must have the
sanction of the Almighty. He fails to give the slightest
proof that any of the "wine" above alluded to was fer-
mented, the kind he sells to his customers and the same
poisoned stuff " that made Noah and Nabal drunk." The
difference between the wines whose use is allowed and pro-
hibited by the Lord, was fully discussed by me in the March
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712 THE ARENA.
Arena, and I will take no time to repeat in this discussion.
The " strong drink " referred to in these passages may have
been other than intoxicating liquors; it may have been sarsa-
parilla juice or coffee. Who knows? Certainly there is no
biblical proof that it was brandy, gin, or fermented wine.
The gentleman quotes the Lord's reproof of the slanderous
Pharisees who called Him a " winebibber," as if it were His
own acknowledgment of the habit, and adds that Christ
could not come upon earth and live exactly as He did when
here, and be admitted to membership in the Methodist church.
Like the proverbial Yankee, I will reply to this by asking a
question. Does the writer believe that if Christ were on
earth to-day He would engage in the wholesale liquor busi-
ness or frequent saloons ? Would He enjoy the fellowship
of the class of men He would meet, as a rule, in these places?
The very idea is shocking, doubtless, to him as well as to
Prohibitionists and Methodists. Judging from His abundiint
teachings, and the fact that He came to bring peace and joy
to all mankind, He would be a strict teetotaler and a Prohi-
bition voter.
The gentleman must search the Scriptures still further,
and give other proofs than he does, before he can base his
right to be a wholesale liquor dealer in alcoholic stimulants
upon the commands of God. If there can be found in his
collection of liquors and in the saloons which he supplies
only the sweet wine permitted by the command and example
of the Lord, he can consistently be a member of any Christian
church, and the Prohibitionists will have no quarrel with
his business. To have remained in his business "twenty-two
years " and made a financial success, he has been supplying
the trade with the poison that bloats the face, blears the eye,
staggers the footsteps, burns the brain, festers the stomach,
rots the liver and kidneys, and sends men through the slow
tortures of alcoholism to death and damnation. God says,
"No drunkard can inherit the kingdom of heaven." The
gentleman is engaged in this business, not to serve Christ,
but to make money. To all dealers in intoxicating liquors
— and this includes the deacon who votes for it as w r ell as
the man who sells it — God says, "Woe unto him that giveth
his neighbor drink; that putteth the bottle to his lips and
maketh him drunken also." Science and observation teach
that to the extent to which a man imbibes this poison his
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IS LIQUOR SELLING A SIN? 713
brain and nerves are affected, and he is drunken. A whole-
sale liquor dealer " putteth the bottle to his neighbor's lips,"
and if God's word be true he bringeth " woe " upon himself.
The Scriptures say, " It is good neither to eat flesh nor to
drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth or
is offended or is made weak."
I will turn to the records of the daily press for proof that
the liquor business does cause men to stumble, and that by
it they are made weak. In the city of Chicago, for many
months, there has been an average of three murders per day
caused by drunkenness. In a single state, within one month,
four fathers have gone to their homes drunken and murdered
their helpless children, and in two instances have killed the
wife and mother. The heart sickens at the awful mobs,
crimes, and murders reported by the press, day after day
caused by drink-crazed, brutalized men who are made "to
stumble and made weak " by those who have put the bottle
to their neighbor's lips for private gain. Suffice it to say
that out of the more than seven thousand murders committed
in the United States last year, over four thousand of these
were publicly recorded as being caused by intoxicated men,
and a large percentage of the others were owing to drink.
The liquor dispensed from these wholesale houses robs men
of physical health, of moral rectitude, of financial independ-
ence; it destroys the peace and safety of wives, children,
and homes; it peoples institutions for dependents ; it multi-
plies jails, prisons, and almshouses, and furnishes the saloon,
the assassin of our civilization, with its quiver of weapons.
God's word says, u Thou shalt not kill." Liquor nerves
the hand of the murderer.
God's word says, " Thou shalt not steal." Liquor palsies
the honor and makes the thief.
God's word says, u Thou shalt not commit adultery."
Liquor is the parent of the social evil.
God's word says, "Thou shalt not bear false witness."
Liquor thwarts justice with perjury.
The Bible is filled with admonitions against drink; there-
fore the man who deals in that which brings such a train of
evils in its wake, " fails to conform to and transgresses the
law of God " and wilfully commits sin. Indeed, there is not
a word between the lids of the Bible, and there is no human
experience, that can justify any mao, professing to be a
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714 THE ABENA.
follower of Jesus, in being a dealer in intoxicating liquors.
It is not unusual for that which is too cruel to be called
human to be called divine. The Bible has been quoted, at
all times, to uphold every wrong that has afflicted mankind.
To quote it to sustain the poison traffic is no exception to
the rule.
I commend for the prayerful consideration of this gifted
gentleman and all other professed Christians engaged in the
traffic, either for political preferment or for gain, these words
of the apostle, "For we must all appear before the judgment
seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in
his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good
or bad." On this judgment day what will be the verdict
upon those who have brought the awful train of evils pro-
duced by the liquor traffic upon humanity ?
No matter how Utopian this liquor dealer imagines his
business might be, he knows what it is, and eveiy sentiment
of humanity and every command of God admonishes him to
quit the mean traffic, that he may be respected on earth and
saved in heaven. No, the Prohibitionists have received no
special new dispensation, as the writer intimates. They find
the old one sufficient for their demands.
FREE AGENCY.
The gentleman tells us of the " Lord's plan of free agency."
I am always amused when I note the great intimacy liquor
dealers claim to have with the Lord. He quotes the words
of Milton, —
I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood though free to fall.
Certainly he made man free to stand or fall; but to the
fellows who make it a business to stand around to trip up
these free agents that they may the more easily take a tumble,
He said, " Thou shalt not," thus making of Himself the first
great Prohibitionist. If the liquor seller shall not be pro-
hibited because of his birthright of free agency, then the
microbe dispenser and the criminal must remain undisturbed
by the laws of quarantine or punishment. Truly God made
man a free agent, but his free agency ends where the welfare
of his associates begins. The liquor dealer's free agency
ends where that of any other criminal ends who WQUid prey
upon the welfare of others for personal gain,
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IS LIQUOR SELLING A SIN? 715
LONGEVITY AND THE TRAFFIC.
Not only Scripture but science is called to the defense of
the Christ-like character of this wholesale dealer's business.
He gives a long array of figures taken from the British
Medical Association's report, in which he makes the total
abstainers live, on an average, one year less than the " de-
cidedly intemperate," and several years less than "free
drinkers " and " careless drinkers " and " habitually tem-
perate." In the face of such facts, what unscientific fellows
the managers of life insurance companies are who refuse
risks on the lives of " decidedly intemperate " men ! If
these figures are correct, life insurance agents should hunt
out the blear-eyed constituency of the dives and saloons,
and capture men on their way to the Keeley cures, that they
may be sure of safe and long-lived policy holders.
Unfortunately for the gentleman's argument, these figures
have been long ago repudiated, as garbled and misleading,
by the Association in whose name they are quoted. The
business world, daily observation, scientific research in medi-
cine, as well as ordinary common sense, would repudiate
such gross misrepresentation of facts, no matter by whom
published. The highest and latest authority in medical
science declares that alcoholic stimulants should seldom, if
ever, be used as a medicine and never as a beverage. Thus
both Scripture and science declare against the gentleman's
business.
If, as he says, he is intensely interested in the suppression
of drunkenness, let him leave the business that creates this
drunkenness. He is one link in the chain of agencies that .
binds the millions of slaves to rum. He can cease his fears
that our " civil and religious liberties " will take wings and
fly away when there is no more traffic in alcoholic liquors.
If justice and liberty depend upon the virtues of the
people, as all good men claim, then the liquor traffic must
be suppressed, or our republic will fail. The saloon and the
kingdom of Christ cannot occupy the same land together;
they are too directly antagonistic to each other. Which
shall die and which shall live remains for the Christian con-
science of this republic to decide. The Methodist church is
right in declaring in its "Book of Discipline" that to "license
is sin." Would to God it was as near right in its conduct
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at the ballot box as it is in its conference declarations ! The
saloon would soon be outlawed, and the wholesale dealers
should turn their attention to other business which they
possess the ability to follow with success and honor. We
would no longer hear the cry of the mob, " Give us work or
give us bread," in this land of plenty, if the waste of this
traffic were no more. May God give all men grace unsel-
fishly to see their individual responsibility for this traffic,
which, more than all other agencies combined, hinders the
reign of peace on earth and good will to men.
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STUDY OF THOMAS PAINE.
BY E. P. POWELL.
In writing a companion article for my recent notes con-
cerning Benjamin Franklin, I shall begin by placing side by
side their religious views, or creeds, as made public by them-
selves. This I do because, for some reason, Mr. Paine has
been made to suffer historical ostracism for opinions shared
by both men in common. I trust that we have now so far
outgrown narrowness of theological judgment, that this will
not enfeeble any man's honor for Franklin, while it may
soften the rancor that has been allowed to grow against the
character of Paine. It was in 1790, when Franklin was
eighty-four, that Ezra Stiles, president of Yale College,
wrote him a note, saying: "As much as I know of Doctor
Franklin, I have not an idea of his religious sentiments. I
wish to know the opinion of my venerable friend concerning
Jesus of Nazareth. He will not impute this to impertinence
or to improper curiosity in one who, for so many years, has
continued to love, estimate, and revere his abilities and
character, with an ardor and affection bordering on adoration.
I shall never ce<ase to wish you that happy immortality,
which I believe Jesus alone has purchased for the virtuous
and truly good of every religious denomination, and for
those of every age, nation, and mythology who, reverencing
the Deity, are filled with integrity, righteousness, and benevo-
lence." This highly charitable and manly letter brought the
following response: —
"You desire to know something of my religion. It is
the first time that I have been questioned on it. But I
cannot take your curiosity amiss, and shall endeavor in a
few words to satisfy it. Here is my creed: I believe in one
God, the Creator of the universe ; that he governs it by
his providence; that he ought to be worshipped; that the
most acceptable service we render him is doing good to
his other children ; that the soul of man is immortal, and
will be treated with justice in another life, respecting its
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conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points
in all sound religion ; and I regard them, as you do, in
whatever sect I meet with them. As to Jesus of Nazareth,
my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think his
system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the
best the world ever saw or is like to see; but I apprehend it
has received various corrupting changes; and I have some
doubts as to his divinity, though it is a question I do not
dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it
needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an
opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble. I see
no harm, however, in its being believed, if that belief has the
good consequences of making his doctrines more respected
and more observed; especially as I do not perceive that the
Supreme takes it amiss, by distinguishing unbelievers, in his
government of the world, with any peculiar marks of dis-
pleasure. I have let others enjoy their religious sentiments,
without reflecting on them for those that appeared to me
unsupportable, or even absurd. All sects have experienced
my good will, in assisting them with subscriptions; and as I
have never opposed any of their doctrines, I hope to go out
of the world in peace with them all."
This letter may explain to some extent why the theologi-
cal world has ever been more tolerant toward Franklin.
Yet it is not true that he had never opposed their doctrines;
while it is true that he had, in his later years, aimed to
avoid giving offence, and had given freely to aid them in
building their houses for worship. "Omitting the crude
views that he put forth in his early literary days, we cannot
quite forget the fact that he composed for himself a private
litany and service of worship, w r hich he used or might use
at home, and in his mature years determined to forego
further attendance on churches. Earlier in life, he drew up
an amended version of the Lord's Prayer, and wrote out a
modern Ten Commandments, the last one being, " Imitate
Jesus and Socrates."
In 1756 he wrote to a friend: "The faith you mention
has doubtless its use in the world; but I wish it were more
productive of good works than I have generally seen it — I
mean real good works, such as kindness, charity, mercy, and
public spirit; not holiday-keeping, sermon reading or hear-
ing, performing church ceremonies, or making long prayers,
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STUDY OF THOMAS PAINE. 719
filled with flatteries and compliments, despised even by wise
men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity." Early
in life he projected a book to be called " The Art of Virtue."
This he never quite gave over the longing to complete. In
1760 he wrote to Lord Karnes a long letter on his project,
explaining it. He says it is but " part of a great and exten-
sive project that required the whole man to execute." In
fact, with all his other absolutely distinct personalities,
Franklin antedated Herbert Spencer as the philosopher of a
complete scheme of etliics. But he had not the " whole
man " or whole life to devote to it. Our own age is just
beginning to develop an ethical education — the very idea
sketched by Franklin a century ago. The press teems with
volumes on morals as distinct from religion. It was neces-
sary first, before the constructive and building period, that
there should be a development of the destructive and elimin-
ative. Paine was a destructive by contrast.
A professed letter of Franklin, without date or address,
was published by William Temple Franklin, in which he is
represented as reproving some one for a proposed publica-
tion. The letter does not materially change our estimate of
Franklin's position. In it he says: "I shall only give you
my opinion that, though your reasonings are subtle, you will
not succeed so as to change the general sentiments of man-
kind; and the consequences of printing will be a great deal
of odium drawn upon yourself, mischief to you, and no
benefit to others. Think how great a portion of mankind
consists of weak and ignorant men and women, who have
need of the motives of religion to restrain them from vice, to
support their virtue, and retain them in the practice of it till
it becomes habitual, which is the great point for security.
If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be
without it?" This prudential letter, if Franklin ever wrote
it, may have been written to Paine, as asserted. The reply
has never seen the light, if ever written. It would not be
difficult, however, to imagine the contents would have been
of this sort: "If, sir, you feel the need of religion so strongly
for others, why not also for yourself ? If by your silence, you
seek to defend religion, why not also by example? for I
learn that you have, for nearly your whole life, withdrawn
from church service, and are an unbeliever in the substance
of the creeds. Besides, do you not show by your course, a
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total lack of faith that your own art of virtue or practice of
morals is of any worth to the bulk of mankind ? Are we to
have one religion for the few philosophers, and another for
the masses ? If so, may I not ask, sir, who is to draw the
dividing line, and say, Thou art the wise man ; and thou art
the weak fool ? Besides, is there not a principle higher than
all other principles, that it is safe to know the truth, to
speak the truth, and to stand by the truth; and that in. the
end, such an honest course will turn out wisest, as well as
safest and most honorable, both for the one who speaks, and
for those he addresses? I am aware that this course will
often bring opprobrium ; that it even carried Socrates to his
death. But I am also aware that Jesus, by such obloquy and
suffering, became the Saviour of Christendom. My dear Mr.
Franklin, allow me to remind you that in the Ten Command-
ments, as amended by your own able pen and honest wit,
the closing one reads, 4 Imitate Jesus and Socrates.' I will
follow your counsel."
This, I assume, might have been the reply justly penned
by Mr. Paine. The world never needs a duplicate of any
great man; and nature never tries her hand at such a pro-
duction without creating a rogue or a fool. One Franklin
was enough. It would have gone hard with America, could
she not also have developed a very different sort of man —
a man of almost no diplomatic tact; a man who had no
thought but to strike a straight blow, tell the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth — and take the
consequences. I have led the way to this man by indirec-
tion; and it is hardly necessary to say more of that dreaded
and abhorred infidelity of his, than I have already inferred.
It was a creed almost identical with that of Franklin; it was a
temperament wholly unlike his. Without training or temper
for the Socratic method, without prudential reserve, he
spoke always on the housetop; in secret he said nothing.
It is not necessary to indorse his views to honor the man.
Nor am I willing to say that the method he used was more
admirable than that employed by his friend; for we are
always in need of the cautious who carry by siege, as well as
of the gallant who take by storm. However, let us see that
I do not draw the substantial comparison without warrant:
" I believe," wrote Mr. Paine, " in one God, and no more,
and hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe that
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STUDY OF THOMAS PAINE. 721
religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and
endeavoring to make our fellow-beings happy." He closes
the first part of his " Age of Reason " as follows: " The crea-
tion we behold is the real and ever-existing word of God, in
which we cannot be deceived. It proclaims his power; it
demonstrates his wisdom; it manifests his goodness and
beneficence. The moral duty of man consists in imitating
the moral goodness and beneficence of God, manifested in
the creation toward all his creatures. Seeing, as we daily
do, the goodness of God to all men, it is an example calling
upon all men to practise the same toward each other ; and
consequently everything of persecution and revenge between
man and man, and everything of cruelty to animals, is a
violation of moral duty. I content myself with the believ-
ing, even to positive conviction, that the power that gave an
existence, is able to continue it in any form and manner he
pleases, either with or without the body. In one point all
nations agree — all believe in a God. The things in which
they disagree, are the redundances annexed to that belief :
therefore, if ever a universal religion prevail, it will be not
by believing in things new, but in getting rid of redun-
dances." In another article, he adds: "I have said that I
hope for happiness after this life. This hope is comfortable
to me, and I presume not to go beyond the comfortable idea
of hope, with respect to a future state." In " A Discourse to
Theophilanthropists," he says, "We profess and we proclaim,
in peace, the pure, unmixed, comfortable, and rational belief
in a God, as manifested to us in the universe." In a letter
to Camille Jordan, he wrote, "The first object of inquiry, in
all cases, more especially in matters of religion, is truth ; " .
and he recommends him to address the French Legislature as
follows: " O my colleagues! let us hasten to give encourage-
ment to agriculture and manufactures, that commerce may
reinstate itself and our people have employment. Let us
review the conditions of the suffering poor, and wipe from
our country the reproach of forgetting them. Let us devise
means to establish schools of instruction, that we may banish
ignorance. Let us propagate morality, unfettered by super-
stition. Let us cultivate justice and benevolence, that the
God of our fathers may bless us." Samuel Adams wrote
him reprovingly for having become an infidel. " My vener-
able friend," he replied, u I am obliged to you for what you
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style my services, in awakening the public mind to a
Declaration of Independence, and supporting it after it was
declared. As to the 4 Age of Reason,' which you condemn
without having read it, I must inform you why I wrote and
published it at the time I did. In the first place, I saw my
life in continual danger [he was then member of the French
National Convention] ; my friends were falling as fast as the
guillotine could cut their heads off, and, as I expected
every day the same fate, I resolved to begin my work. The
people of France were running headlong into atheism; and I
had the work in their own language, to stop them in that
career and fix them in the first article of every man's creed,
who has any creed at all, ' I believe in God.' Our relation
to each other in this world is as men, and the man who is a
friend to man and to his rights, let his religious opinions be
what they may, is a good citizen ; to whom I can give, as I
ought to do and as every other man ought, the right hand of
fellowship, and to none with more hearty good-will than to
you, my dear friend." Paine had told John Adams that he
intended, near the close of his life, to write out his thoughts
of religion ; but expecting to be guillotined, he wrote earlier
than he intended.
I am not quite sorry that in the discussion of the qualities
of one of the greatest men of our Revolutionary era, I have
found it necessary to stand on the defensive at the very out-
set. It is, I am sure, with moderated feelings, that the most
ardent lover of the accepted creeds will now consider the
marvellous fitness of this man to assist the country in its
peril, and to secure it from a total collapse in the incipiency
of its independence. When Franklin cried, Peace and
patience, Paine answered, with Henry and Otis, Our patience
is fairly exhausted; and as for peace, they have waged war
on us continually for years — on our property, our commerce,
and our persons. Never before nor since, has America been
so startled as by the publication, in 1775, of the pamphlet
entitled " Common Sense." It was read everywhere. In an
age when books were not liable to a large circulation, this one
sold one hundred thousand copies. Dr. Rush said of it, " It
burst from the press with an effect that has rarely been pro-
duced by type and paper in any age or country." Washing-
ton held it to be convincing. One writer adds: "It is not
too much to claim for it, that it hastened the Declaration of
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STUDY OF THOMAS PAINE. 723
Independence six or eight weeks; and if that Declaration had
been delayed eight weeks, it might have been delayed a
century. If it had not been adopted before the battle of
Long Island — which occurred six weeks after the Fourth
of July — it would not have then been adopted." It is impos-
sible to exaggerate the effect of the pamphlet. But it was
not his noblest work; for in the terrible hour of blackest
disaster, poverty, suffering, and despair, when Washington
was retreating before Lord Howe, defeated, and the country
was beginning to feel the cause hopeless, Paine wrote the
first number of " Crisis." Washington had it read at the
head of every army corps; and at every pinch of affairs
throughout the war, the words of Paine were looked for, to
inspirit the soldiers and arouse the flagging patriotism of the
people. Franklin could not have done this work. His logic
of prudence and honesty and courage would have failed to
touch the souls that were discouraged. It needed words of
fire and logic that rang like the blows of a berserker's sword
on his shield.
I have not overestimated these services of Thomas Paine.
Cobbett wrote to Lord Grenville: " A little thing sometimes
produces a great effect. It appears to me very clear that
some beastly insults offered Mr. Paine, while he was excise-
man in England, were the real cause of the Revolution in
America." Washington wrote to Joseph Reed N of " Common
Sense," " It is unanswerable." In the Pennsylvania Jour-
naly which Paine edited, appeared, on Oct. 18, 1775, a series
of charges against Great Britain somewhat like those after-
wards contained in the Declaration of Independence; and
the closing passage was this, " When I reflect on these, I
hesitate not for a moment to believe that the Almighty will
separate America from Britain ; call it independency or
what you will, if it is the cause of God and humanity, it will
grow." Cobbett said whoever wrote the " Declaration," Paine
was its author. The first number of " Crisis " was written by
the camp-fires on the banks of the Delaware. No wonder
that its first sentence was, " These are the times that try
men's souls." It was taken for the watchword at Trenton,
when the English were beaten and the Hessians captured.
General Lee spoke of Paine as " the man with genius in
his eyes."
When Mr. Paine saw with what avidity his first pamphlet
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was bought and read, instead of endeavoring to turn it to
his own advantage, he gave all the profits to the public. He
wrote in later years: " Politics and self-interest have been so
uniformly connected, that the world, from being so often
deceived, has a right to be suspicious of public characters.
But with regard to myself, I am perfectly at ease on this
head. I saw an opportunity in which I could do some good,
and I followed exactly what my heart dictated. I gave
the copyright of " 4 Common Sense' up to every state in the
Union." So far as we can judge of human actions, here was
pure, disinterested philanthropy; a man who desired nothing
more than to do good.
The Declaration of Independence being accomplished, and
the struggle fairly on, Paine became a volunteer, with other
men of note, carrying the musket in the ranks. Here he
met Lafayette, with whom he established a warm friendship,
while Washington showed him special marks of esteem. But
his pen was so formidable an instrument, that he may be said
to have formed a distinct army corps by himself. What
ringing words are these: "The summer soldier and the sun-
shine patriot will in this crisis slirink from the service of his
country ; but he that stands it now deserves the love and
thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily
conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the
harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph ; what we
obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly." His bitterest
enemy testifies that the " Crisis " had more than its intended
effect. The convention of New York, which was dispersed
by fear, was once more rallied; militiamen, who were strag-
gling homeward, read it, turned about, and went back to the
army to re-enlist unsolicited. The whole despairing land
and army were reinspired with hope and fresh resolution.
Mr. Paine was, in the spring of 1777, elected secretary to
the Committee on Foreign Affairs. His position was not
unlike that of our present secretary of state. He performed
his duties faithfully, but lacked diplomatic tact, and was led
to resign in 1779, by the bissatisfaction which his blunt
straightforwardness superinduced in Congress. In 1781 he
was sent to France with Colonel Laurens, on a scheme of his
own origination, to secure a loan of the French government.
The result was a gift to the states of six millions of livres,
and a loan of ten millions more. He planned a secret visit
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STUDY OF THOMAS PAINE. 725
to England at this time, believing that, if he could once
get into that country, without being known until he could
issue a publication, he could open the eyes of the people
to the madness and stupidity of their government. The
above was not his only financial exploit; for at a time
when immediate dissolution of the army was looked for, he
began a private subscription, giving his own salary as secre-
tary of state, and whatever else he could command. The
result was three hundred thousand pounds, which was
used in the capture of Cornwallis. From time to time
numbers of the " Crisis " appeared whenever most needed,
besides other pamphlets of great ability and power. The
war ended gloriously for America. Washington took up his
quarters for a time near Princeton, N. J. From there he
wrote to Paine, asking him to come to him and share with
him his residence.
In 1787 Mr. Paine crossed the Atlantic on business affairs,
spending his time mainly in England, where he was well
received, until, in reply to Edmund Burke's " Reflections on
the French Revolution," he wrote " The Rights of Man."
The appearance of the first part of this masterly work roused
the intensest bitterness among the people of Great Britain,
and led to insults and persecutions. Orders for his arrest
reached Dover only a few minutes after he had crossed over
to Calais. The French greeted him with a frenzy of
enthusiasm. They crowned him with chaplets, strewed
flowers in his road, and devised eveiy method to show their
gratitude. They even elected him from four departments, as
representative to the national convention. As Lafayette was
to Americans in America, such, and even more, was Paine
to France.
Up to this time Thomas Paine was held to be one of the
greatest men of the times. Certainly no literary ventures in
the history of the world had ever before accomplished so
much in the way of positive results, or attained such uni-
versal popularity. " Common Sense " and " Crisis," in
twelve separate issues, had been, more than anything else, the
cause and support of the Revolution and the establishment
of a separate government. " The Rights of Man " was a
masterly work, and created an enthusiasm everywhere.
Only the aristocrats abhorred the work and hated the
author. It is not too much to say that at that hour, apart
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from Washington and Franklin, Mr. Paine was the best
loved man in the world. The Liberals of England sang all
about the kingdom, to the tune of "God save the King": —
God save great Thomas Paine!
His " Bights of Man " proclaim,
From pole to pole.
Prosecuted, after his escape to France, by the British
government, for "a wicked and seditious libel," Erskine,
who was then the most eloquent advocate in England,
defended him in a speech of marvellous power. The shower
of fame and notoriety probably told somewhat on Paine's
character; but not more than similar popular effusiveness on
Franklin. His career was one calculated to turn the head of
any one but a man of true courage and philanthropy, honest
and faithful to the rights of his fellow-men. The whirl-
wind of events in France gave him hardly time to study
modesty and humility, but he bore himself well. The
decree that met him soon after landing, conferred the title
of French citizen on Priestly, Paine, Bentham, Wilberforce,
Clarkson, Pestalozzi, Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Kos-
ciusko, and seven others. In the convention he was associ-
ated with Brissot, Vergniaud, Bardie, Danton, Condorset,
Gensonn£, Potion, and the Abbe SieySs, as a committee on
the constitution. Four of these were afterwards guillo-
tined; one committed suicide in prison ; another was eaten
by wolves while hiding in the forest. Paine himself was
condemned to death; and two more only died natural deaths.
One of the ablest and most statesmanlike letters ever penned,
was addressed by him to Danton on the state of affairs.
This letter foretold the collapse of the French Republic, and
pointed out the only course of safety. When the king was
on trial, Paine urged with great eloquence and clearest logic
the folly, as well as the criminality, of putting him to death.
One of the grandest scenes in that succession of dramas was
the appearance of Thomas Paine at the tribune, with his
speech to plead for the life of Louis XVI. He could not
speak in French. Marat shouted that he should not be
heard, being a Quaker ; but the convention voted to hear.
Thuriot soon rushed up to the tribune, declaring the inter-
preter was not giving the speech correctly. Marat added to
the confusion by screaming: u It is a lie ! I denounce the
interpreter. That is not the opinion of Thomas Paine/'
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STUDY OF THOMAS PAINE. 72T
The convention had not five members who understood
English. They appealed to Coulon, a good English scholar.
"It is correct," said Coulon. Then Paine uttered such
words as he well knew endangered his own life, but he did
not flinch. " My language," said he, " has always been the
language of liberty and humanity; and I know by experience,
that nothing so exalts a nation as the union of these two prin-
ciples under all circumstances. ?f I could speak the French
language, I would descend to your bar, and, in the name of
all my brothers in America, would present you a petition to
suspend the execution of Louis." This scene brought him
in violent conflict with the great maniac and scoundrel
Marat, the most loathsome character of the mob. Robes-
pierre also became his mortal enemy. Charlotte Corday put
an end to Marat, but that only increased the fury of the
storm. Vergniaud said, " She has prepared a scaffold for us
all, but then she has shown us how to die."
Knowing his danger, Mr. Paine, who had long meditated
writing out his religious views, hastened to pen " The Age
of Reason." None too soon, for he was flung into prison six
hours after the completion of the work. All the noblest of
France were there with him. They were insulted, abused,
fed with vile food, and surrounded with spies and pimps.
On April 5, 1794, he bade farewell to Dan ton, Desmoulins,
and his other immediate associates, who were taken out to be
guillotined. It is pleasant to know that he had not dis-
honored America by flinching in his Saxon grit. He had
voted as he believed; he had dared to use free speech.
Robespierre issued a decree for his death; but by mistake the
jailer put the fatal mark on his open door, which, being shut,
concealed it. July 28 the tyrant met the fate of the dog
that he was. Ten days later Paine addressed a pathetic
letter for justice and freedom to the national convention.
Appeals began to pour in from his French constituents and
from Americans that he be released. At last James Monroe
reached France as our accredited minister. In October of
1794 he wrote a diplomatic letter to the Committee of Public
Safety. In that letter he said: —
The citizens of the United States cannot look back upon the time of
their own Revolution without recollecting, among the names of their
most distinguished patriots, that of Thomas Paine. The* services
he rendered his country in its struggle for freedom, have implanted v\
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the hearts of his countrymen a sense of gratitude, never to be effaced
as long as they shall deserve the title of a just and generous people.
The above-named citizen is now languishing in prison, affected with
a disease growing more intense with his confinement. I beg, there-
fore, to call your attention to his condition, and to request you to
hasten the moment when the law shall decide his fate, in case of any
accusation against him, and, if none, to restore him to liberty.
Greeting and brotherhood. Monroe.
It was a model letter, fey both manhood and diplomacy,
down to the very signature.' Two days later Paine was
released. But he had, in his advanced years, been im-
prisoned and barbarously treated, and kept in mortal fear for
ten months. A baser act was never committed by any na-
tion. They crowned him as the devotees of idols have
crowned their sacrifices. His health was broken ; and although
he responded to a vote of the convention to resume his
seat with them, he was soon dangerously ill.
The shock of his fall was painful to Mr. Paine, as it
would have been to any man who had enjoyed such extraor-
dinary and well-deserved repute. In England his friends who
dared to publish his works, were prosecuted and imprisoned.
In France he was no longer a power. In America, notwith-
standing the words of Monroe, he was neglected and, by a
large part, hated for his views concerning the popular beliefs.
Up to this time nothing had been said against his character
or his manners. In England he is said to have led a " quiet
round of philosophical leisure and enjoyment." He was oc-
cupied with writing, and visiting a few select friends, and
occasionally visiting coffee houses. Evenings he played
chess, and engaged in singing or recreation with his friends,
or in conversation. Among his intimates were Dr. Priestly,
Joel Barlow, the poet, Mr. Sharp,, the engraver, Lord
Edward Fitzgerald, the French ambassador, Home Tooke,
Captain Perry, and Colonel Oswald. But he was now down,
and a good deal broken and helpless, and, what was worse,
the religious world wished to believe badly of him. The
wish was father of the deed. Accidental testimony as to his
life in France is best. A gentleman in Paris wrote of him :
" An English lady, not less remarkable for her talents than
for her elegance of manners, entreated me to contrive that
she might meet Mr. Paine. I invited him to dinner. For
above four hours, he kept every one astonished at his mem-
ory, his keen observation of men and manners, his numberless
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STUDY OF THOMAS PAINE. 729
anecdotes. His remarks on genius and taste can never be
forgotten by those present." The picture of his daily life,
by his intimate friend, Clio Rickman, is one of exceeding
beauty. " The happy circle who lived with him here, will
ever remember these days with delight. With these select
friends he would talk of his boyish days, play at chess, or
enliven the moments with anecdotes ; would sport on the
gravel walks; and then retire to his boudoir, where he was
up to his knees in papers and letters." Joel Barlow says of
him that " The greatest part of the readers in the United
States will not be soon persuaded to consider him in any
other light than as a drunkard and a deist." The facts
seem to be, that those who turned their backs on him for his
free thought and the " Age of Reason " found his back
turned on them; for he was proud, if he was not vain, and
among these, I fear, was Barlow himself. The latter says :
44 He always frequented the best company in England and
France, till he became the object of calumny, till he conceived
himself neglected and despised by his former friends. From
that moment he gave himself much to drink and companions
less worthy of his better days:" From this day, detraction
followed him to his grave. The American people forgot his
benefaction, his genius, and his glory. History was written
to obliterate his fair fame, and children were taught to
abhor Tom Paine.
Mr. Paine's will closes with these words: "I have lived
an honest and useful life to mankind; my time has been
spent in doing good; I die in perfect composure and resig-
nation to the will of my God." . Is it needful for a student
of history, well aware, as he must be, of the insolence of both
political and theological controversy in the latter end of the
eighteenth century — a bitterness that assailed Washington,
Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Adams, and, indeed,
found no one of them perfect — is it necessary, I say, to wade
through the vitriolic mire that surrounds the closing scenes
of Mr. Paine's career? If all were true, a kindly and grate-
ful people should draw a vail, and drop a tear — for, alas,
how many heroes have had the heel of Achilles! But it is
not true that we are compelled to hide from view the old
man after his work days were over, and the lamp burned
low. I shall leave to others to sweep up the slime of those
who had courage only to surround his death bed with malig-
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730 THE ARENA.
nity. History has to do with other people. I have not the
talons to tear with delight the carcass from which has de-
parted the loyal soul of wit, genius, bravery, self-denial,
heroism, patriotism, philanthropy, and piety, even though
that soul shall have left the enfeebled frame some few
months before the last breath has been breathed. Fortu-
nately for us, perhaps not so fortunately for Mr. Paine, we
have outlived the time when it can be understood how big-
otry can love falsehood, and with what shameless zeal it can
invent lies and torture truths, in order to obliterate glory
and smirch beauty that stands in the way of its power. Ah!
had Paine but died before he wrote his "Age of Reason"!
But had he died before that day, the twentieth century
would have lost the pleasure of lifting his chaplets, resur-
recting his fame, and doing him — what history at last will
do — justice.
I am not given to tears, but I confess that I have stopped
my pen more than once in the recital of this story of a man
to whom we owe so vast a debt — sometimes with indignation,
and again with grief. For what a shame rests on our his-
tory! It would have been less unkind had Robespierre's
warrant of arrest haled him to the guillotine. That would
have been a brief pain; but this has been to suffer shameless
ingratitude from a country that he, more than any other
man, caused to be free, and to be outlawed, hated, branded,
in the house of his own kin. What a fate has been his —
what a century-long grief! Washington was his friend, and
loved him well; and it was one of the griefs of the first
president, that he saw no way of compensating him for his
eminent services during the war. But he could not. So
bitter was the sentiment of the people for his writing the
" Age of Reason " that they would tolerate no courtesies
toward the author of "Common Sense." So had hatred
extinguished love. But Monroe, when in Paris in 1794,
wrote to Paine: "The crime of ingratitude, I trust, will
never stain our national character. You are considered by
all your countrymen as one who has not only rendered
important service to them, but also as one who, on a more
extended scale, has been the friend of human rights, a dis-
tinguished and able advocate of public liberty. To the wel-
fare and worth of Thomas Paine the American people can
never be indifferent." President Jefferson wrote to him:
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STUDY OF THOMAS PAINE. 731
" Mr. Dawson, who brings over the treaty, is charged with
orders to the captain of the Maryland, to receive and accom-
modate you back, if you can be ready to depart at such a
short warning. You will, in general, find us returned to
sentiments worthy of former times; in these it will be your
glory to have steadily labored with as much effect as any
man living. Accept the assurances of my high esteem and
affectionate attachment."
Pennsylvania voted him five hundred pounds sterling, and
New York conferred on him an estate of several hundred
acres.
That you may live long to continue your useful labors, and to
reap the reward in the thankfulness of nations, is my sincere prayer.
Thomas Jefferson.
The kind hand of death forbade, and the laws of nature so
arranged it, that Thomas Paine did not live to reap the
" thankfulness " of his own nation, through the first century
of its independence. When the Centennial Anniversary
occurred at Philadelphia in 1876, the decree of the nation
excluded his bust and all memorial of him from Independ-
ence Hall. One writer says: "Imagine him looking down,
and seeing all over the United States public buildings and
parks, adorned with statues of Washington, the Adamses,
Franklin, Jefferson, and the rest of the glorious Revolution-
ary band; but no public statue or bust or portrait anywhere
to keep alive popular gratitude to the man who was the first
to write the proud words, 4 The United States of America.' "
But are the days not nigh when the American people can
act with courage, according to their knowledge? The "Age
of Reason " grows mild and mellow in the light of contro-
versies which now agitate theology. The higher criticism
of professors in theological seminaries, and leading preach-
ers in ail sects, is an arrow's flight ahead of Thomas Paine,
in its far-reaching consequences, and not inferior in its
manly adhesion to the truth. We shall yet see his biog-
raphy honorably listed in some future American statesman
series, as constituting with Franklin and Washington a
triumvirate that created the independence of the United
States, and laid the foundations of a nation — a man of
unsurpassed courage of convictions, of unwavering faith in
the truth, and supremely possessed of that piety which
consists in love for God and for his fellow-men. Whcu
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732 THE ARENA.
a monument to Paine was spoken of to Andrew Jackson, he
answered: "Thomas Paine needs no monument made by
hand; he has erected himself a monument in the hearts of
all lovers of liberty. ' The Rights of Man ' will be more
enduring than all the piles of marble and granite man can
erect."
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THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CASE.
Verdict No. IV.
[In the following pages Hon. William E. Russell, governor of
Massachusetts, Andrew H. H. Dawson, A. B. Brown, and Henry
Irving render verdicts in the Bacon- Shakespeare Case. It will
be seen that three of these gentlemen vote for Shakespeare, while
Mr. Brown inclines to the belief that Shakespeare wrote the
works, but that he was aided by occult influences.]
I. HON. W. E. RUSSELL.
In the famous case of Bacon against Shakespeare, which has
been so thoroughly and ably tried in The Arena, I render my
verdict for the defendant. Without discussing in detail the evi-
dence, or restating the arguments, the claim of the plaintiff, I
believe, rests upon evidence wholly insufficient to shake the title
of the defendant, universally admitted by his contemporaries and
practically unquestioned for more than two hundred years since.
The works show their author to have been a genius whose
ability and capacity were not subject to usual human limitations,
and therefore not to be measured or tested by usual literary
standards. Upon this assumption most of the arguments against
Shakespeare's authorship fail ; upon no other assumption can we
account for the works at all. William E. Russell.
Verdict for the defendant.
II. A. H. H. DAWSON.
Having been engaged for several years in the official prosecu-
tion of criminals, I have a right to expect that any liberty I take
with the technical terms in common use in criminal forums will
be respected as an excusable result of habit.
Imprimis^ then, were Shakespeare on trial under an indictment
for the authorship of his dramas, I would deem it a very reckless
risk to rely for his acquittal upon a reasonable doubt of his inno-
cence. Were Bacon on trial, however, under an indictment for
the same alleged crime, I should deem it a safe defense to rely
upon a reasonable doubt of his guilt. At this distance of time
from the date of the production of those plays, no direct proof
can be produced for or against the plaintiff or the defendant.
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734 THE ARENA.
Recourse must therefore be had to such presumptive proof, com-
monly called circumstantial evidence, as reaches us through the
transmissions of tradition, corroborated by such revelations of
history and of biography as derive the most force from their
authenticity and can be best reconciled with the age, the customs,
the habits, the tastes and conditions of society, during the reign
of Queen Elizabeth.
The first prominent fact that points towards the Bard of Avon
and away from Bacon as the author of the plays in question, is
the familiar knowledge of the one and the profound ignorance of
the other of the "business" of the stage. It is one thing to write
a poem, and another thing to write a drama in blank verse. The
name of poets in all ages of civilization has been legion, but the
number of dramatists who have understood the "business" of
the stage, from the days of Sophocles and Euripides down to this
hour, can be counted on your fingers. Education has but little
to do with poets, while it has everything to do with dramatists.
The poet is born, the dramatist is not. The greatest poet that
ever lived was Homer. Presumptively he could never have
written a drama. The greatest dramatist that ever lived was
Shakespeare, and the coincident of his marvellous endowments
as a poet elevates him not only to the dizzy eminence occupied
by Homer, but even to a still loftier altitude in fame, and utterly
emasculates the frivolous assumption of his lack of capacity to
have produced those plays, of all claim to serious notice.
Neither history, biography, nor tradition gives us one ray of
light on the dramatic taste, associations, genius, or inclinations of
Bacon. To have been the author of these plays, his love of the
drama must have amounted to a passion, about which his intimate
f riends must have known enough to speak by the card. He must
have been an habititS of theatres — the boon companion of man-
agers, actors, and dramatists. Ben Jonson was his only dramatic
associate. Their relations seem to have been of not only an inti-
mate but a confidential character — entirely too much so to be
reconciled, either with the presumption that Bacon could have
kept from him the secret of his authorship of those plays, or that
he would have incurred the risk of making such mistakes as the
wisest ignorance of the " business " of the stage was bound to
make in the construction of dramas in the age in which they
lived. On the other hand Shakespeare was a professional expert
— a practical artist — master of the "business " of the stage, and
the author of many of its details that increased the facilities with
which plays were then mounted, and about which Bacon knew
nothing, not even enough to appreciate the importance of such
knowledge in attempting dramatization.
Another circumstance which descends like an avalanche from
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THE BACON-SHAKESPEAKE CASE. 735
Alpine summits upon the claims of Bacon, is that in the style of
the two authors there is not the faintest shadow of similitude.
The accidental use of the same word or words, in sentences
upon the same subject, the avowal of the same sentiments, the
betrayal of the same prejudices, can never establish style. That
is something that belongs to every individual, and has its origin
in his intellectual idiosyncrasies, which will give an author away,
sooner or later, in a production of any length, despite every
effort he can make to deceive the expert reader; and in their
respective styles Bacon and Shakespeare are as distinct and
different as are Homer and John Stuart Mill. To grasp style we
must read more than one or two sentences, aye, or one or two
pages, and I am risking nothing to challenge the Baconians to
produce any one page in the writings of Bacon in which they are
for one instant reminded of the style of Shakespeare, or one page
in Shakespeare that can remind any critic of the writings of
Bacon. The learning of Bacon was accessible to all students,
but the dramatic knowledge of Shakespeare was accessible only
to a practical dramatist — a student of the stage and an actor
on it.
I regard, however, the silence of Ben Jonson as more eloquent
evidence in behalf of the defendant than all other contemporary
testimony that has been adduced, pro or con, in this controversy.
Rare old Ben was one of your world-wise observers that was
deception -proof, and never could have been imposed upon by
either Bacon or Shakespeare. His relations with both were
intimate. He recognized Shakespeare as the author of his plays,
which he could not have been, if they were written by Bacon —
both of which facts must have been known to Jonson. It is
moreover true that he did not only admire and respect but loved
Shakespeare, something he never could have done had he known
him to be a plagiarist, an impostor, and a fraud, capable of
appropriating the wisdom and the wit that were the property
of another man and a contemporary at that, and utilizing the
same not only as capital in his business but also in the acquisition
of fame. Bacon's friends must not only establish the fact that
Shakespeare was a thief, but that Ben Jonson was his accom-
plice, and that Lord Bacon connived at their criminality and
recognized as his friends the criminals. If circumstances can
prove anything they must contradict categorically and eternally
the Baconian theory, and confirm Shakespeare's guilt and
Bacon's innocence of the authorship of these plays beyond a
reasonable doubt.
The impudence of the presumption that now, at the distance
of three hundred years, questions either the learning, the intellect,
or the genius of Shakespeare as equal to the production of these
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736 THE ARENA.
great dramas, when Ben Jonson, himself a great dramatist, and
the bosom friend of Shakespeare, recognized his genius, intellect,
and learning as equal to these same dramas, and the dramas as
worthy of their author, would cost us more surprise, were
modesty better appreciated among the friends of Bacon. Intel-
lect is one thing and genius another. Intellect is susceptible of
education and development. Its dignity inspires reverence and
awe. It's the one great gift that above all others is most god-
like. The reign of reason is absolute, from civilization's remotest
bound to ocean's loneliest shore. Unfortunately as much may
not be truthfully said of genius. The light of the one is always
Promethean, while that of the other is often phosphorescent.
They are rarely found united in the same degree. In Shake-
speare they were, in Bacon they were not. The plays in question
are as much indebted for their fame to genius as to intellect.
Bacon's intellect was equal to their production, but his genius
was not; whereas the intimate contemporaries of Shakespeare,
who were competent to criticise character and capacity, never
entertained, or certainly never expressed, a doubt of the capacity
alike of the intellect and the genius of Shakespeare to produce
those dramas, compared with which his poems are the merest
twaddle. He was not at home in the closet; he was on the
stage. His genius, like Job's war horse, snuffed the mimic
battles of the stage from afar, and its bright blade was always
found flashing in the thickest of the fight, hewing its way to
fortune and to fame ; whereas Bacon's intellect, knowing nothing
about the carte and tierce of the stage, neither delivered nor
accepted challenges to dramatic combats, the situations and exi-
gencies of which he had neither the inclination nor education to
appreciate. Bacon could never have been the author of those
felicitous and constantly recurring harmonies that constitute the
marvellous smoothness and incomparable practical perfection for
stage use of each and every one of Shakespeare's dramas.
Another striking feature that distinguishes these plays, and
points to Shakespeare and away from Bacon as their author, is
the fact that their legal learning amounts to but a smattering,
which was worthy of Shakespeare's ignorance of the law, but
totally and utterly unworthy of Bacon's intimate and profound
knowledge of that sublime science. The flippant use of occa-
sional teehnicalites proves nothing, as it is claimed under such an
assumption that Shakespeare was a sailor, an M. D., and an
LL.D. On such superficial sophistry nothing can be proved.
My verdict is for the defendant.
Andrew H. H. Dawson.
A. H. H. Dawson renders verdict for defendant.
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THE BACON-SH A KE8PE ARE CASE. 787
in. A. B. BROWN.
It has been said that the writings under consideration bear
inherent evidence of great knowledge and versatility in erudition
of the writer. It would seem that a hand guided by more than
an average intelligence penned the lines, and it may be asked if
any superficial knowledge gained at Stratford-on-Avon, and sup-
plemented by subsequent experience in London theatrical life, by
Shakespeare, or classic erudition acquired at Oxford and Cam-
bridge, by Sir Francis Bacon — alone and of itself — could
qualify either of these men to write such verse ? Is it not self
evident that the writer dipped his pen within a fount of clearer
thought than that which then characterized any known literary
centre? It is true, the Shakespearean verses seem to be the
flower of all literary productions up to that day, with large addi-
tions of newly-coined words which have since taken their perma-
nent place in the English language. They seem the song of all
nature's unfoldings.
In considering the claims of these two parties to the author-
ship, the defendant is most surely entitled to all testimony tend-
ing to show the true author as well as the claimant. Nay, if it
can be shown that in the organism of Shakespeare, even though
he may have been illiterate, there was concealed a latent force
which when called into action enabled him to pen those lines,
would it not be public justice to admit such a possibility to the
candid consideration of the reading public? In such review of
man's powers the subjective forces of the human soul, as well as
the environment of external living of the ego, should be studied.
Such only, it would seem, is the true method of ethical inquiry,
and the only way the critic may reach a full and correct knowl-
edge upon which to base his conclusions ; for it is self evident
that in human living no agnostic research or material analysis
can measure the capabilities of the human soul. The ethics of
thought and the science of external reasoning, as well as all
material creations, are, as yet, but poorly understood by the most
observant of scientific students.
The most advanced human intellect is often confounded at the
voluntary flow of thought, and the open vision obtained by the
mind under esoteric stimulant. Incidents of this kind are not
unknown to the reader. Even Daniel Webster, the great Amer-
ican orator and statesman, has been reported as saying that, in
his u Reply to Hayne," it seemed as if all nature opened her
secret archives to him, and all he had to do was to use the
thoughts which crowded themselves upon him. Without pre-
vious study or especial preparation, the infinite potencies of
space often fill the human mind with thoughts of great beauty
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788 THE ARENA.
and logical sequence. Many men when brought into great
emergencies have been known to act and speak far beyond their
average manifest abilities. Such incidents are not infrequent
among writers, and it is not impossible that Shakespeare may
have been such a man ; and hence it would not seem unreason-
able to claim him as one of those subjects whom the esoteric
forces of the universe so often use to present great and marvel-
lous truths to the external world.
There is also strong analogous evidence which the critic should
consider, in addition to such evidence as has already been pre-
sented in the case, before it can be said that there has been a
complete and full hearing upon the subject, and that all which
would strengthen the defence has been considered. In view of
nature's constant and marvellous revelations coming to the race
daily, in the chain of phenomenal events, none, however astound-
ing, need astonish man because it comes to the world upon an
illiterate pen, or through lips untrained within college walls.
Hence, to elucidate a problem of this importance, may it not be
admissible to seek supporting testimony throwing light upon its
solution, through hypothesis ? — a hypothesis of inquiry rather
than one of assertion.
Some of the writers upon this subject have, with Mr. Don-
nelly, declared that " Shakespeare could not have written the
plays accredited to him." This is dogmatic assertion, not
logical reasoning, and precludes all further research for evidence
to substantiate Shakespeare's authorship. But to assume a sup-
position — to formulate a hypothesis of inquiry — leaving the
reasoning faculties open to weigh every kind and shade of evi-
dence found to bear, in any way or degree, upon the subject,
would seem to be the way leading to a correct solution of the
problem. Believing that hidden and unseen forces work ex-
ternal results in mental as in material un foldings, the writer
would ask if Shakespeare may not have been a medial subject
in the hands or under the control of some hidden intelligence,
force, or potent power, through which Shakespeare's organism
afforded opportunity for such intelligence to work phenomena
upon the external plane of life ?
There is, perhaps, no better-established axiom than that a
knowledge of man, his external being, and the environments
pertaining to his universe, lias not and does not come to the race
through collegiate and scientific channels only. Varied are the
sources through which such events and a knowledge of human
life record themselves upon the disk of man's memory. Hence
voluminous is the evidence corroborating the assumption of any
particular form or method within the literary and scientific
world as to man's educators.
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THE BAC0N-SHAKE8PEARE CASE. 789
Even if it be admitted that Shakespeare himself was incapable
of writing the works in question, that assumption or admission is
of itself only negative testimony, and does not in any sense prove
that the Baconian claim is correct ; and that Bacon wrote the
works is not proved by any testimony yet presented. His capa-
bilities, his profound learning, the newly-coined words of Shake-
spearean origin found in Bacon's diary, in no sense establish his
claim to the authorship of the writings. Such evidence only
shows that certain conditions and events may be construed as
reasonable collateral evidence supporting the Baconian critical
attitude, while in an analysis of the evidence of all that has yet
been presented, we get only one residuum — to wit, the summing
up of negative forces in an effort to prove a positive result.
With this the mind, or the reason, is no more satisfied as to the
Baconian claim to authorship, than with the Shakespearean
reputation of two centuries' standing. As a man of letters and
mental parts, perhaps Shakespeare was of himself deficient. It
must take more than an average man to write with such excel-
lency ; and in reading Bacon's known works, the writer finds no
proof that he was competent to produce the plays. It has been
the opinion of some that no living man, unaided by esoteric
inspiration, could claim the honors of their production, and the
writer shares this opinion; and to assume that Bacon was the
only qualified scholar of that day to warrant such writings —
such profundity in verse and prose — is the height of illogical
assumption.
Bacon's works, his known writings themselves, considered by
the side of the Shakespearean productions, are as much inferior in
style, research, and universal delineations of life and its unfold-
ment, as Shakespeare was considered below Bacon in literary
acquirement and intellectual development. The Shakespearean
writings, compared with recorded Baconian thought, bear evi-
dence of a greater inspiration, deeper spirituality, and a much
broader range of ideas. The research in literature, the
draught upon human experience, with the utilization of prophetic
utterance, are each largely manifest in the Shakespearean writ-
ings, while a notable absence of these qualities is prominent in
Bacon's works; and especially may it be said that they are
almost un observable in his poetic writings. Instead of its being
a "miracle" for Shakespeare to write thus, as Mr. Donnelly
asserts it would have been, it would seem to be more than a miracle
for Bacon to have entered that mental and inspirational con-
dition which would have permitted him to conceive and record
such thoughts as Shakespeare has given to the world.
The inquiry, " May it not have been Shakespeare, guided by
occult forces giving his pen more than Shakespearean control,
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740 THE ARENA.
who wrote the works under discussion?" is a hypothesis which
can he considered with reasonable certainty of finding strong
analogous and corroborating evidence to support the assumption.
Surely nothing has been given, or could be adduced, to prove
that William Shakespeare was not one of the medial instruments
the infinite intelligences have chosen, to voice the revelations
omnipotence has seen fit to give to mankind through hidden
and unforeseen forces. Rather, is it not very probable that he
possessed — to a very large extent — those medial powers which
it is now well known are the inheritance of many men and
women of to-day, and which distinguished both seers and sages
who preceded Shakespeare ? In all biblical and historic litera-
ture, such gifts enter largely into the inspirational manifestations
of infinite force, through seership and prophetic revelation. The
individual voicing the divine word has been said to be directly
inspired in his utterance. To-day we see men and women write
and speak, logically and fluently, while in an unconscious state.
Many of the world's recorded thoughts have come to the race
on these mysterious wings. No religion — no historic record —
Egyptian, Chaldean, Brahmanic, or Buddhistic, has entered the
external world except through gates turning upon like hinges.
A similar claim for the origin of the world's records and their
modes of transmission to man comes to us now, as in the past,
apparently through channels of inspirational mediumistic gifts.
In earlier times such revelations came through the seer and the
prophet, and in this more modern day, through intuitive and
inspirational sources, pervading the community and particularized
in individual instances.
It is a well-established maxim that nature works through
constant and like methods in all ages — not changing, except for
present result to become new cause, in evolutionary sequence —
may it not with propriety be claimed that the " ways and means "
nature takes to educate mankind are ever through like channels,
varying only in accordance with individual development and
general human advancement, and that the divine afflatus is ever
and constantly operating to this end? Thus in assuming that
spirituality is the divine essence, and is next in kind to external
man, standing between occult knowledge and deific effort to
instruct man, how natural it seems to have the spirit of all
knowledge speak to the race through medial powers of the
individual, as a chosen channel of communication to the external
world. Nature evidently has not exhausted her resources — she
neither changes her methods nor limits her supply — in cosmical
evolution. Her unfoldings go on as in olden times ; and, in the
absence of proof of any claim like this, in favor of the Baconian
versus Shakespearean hypothesis, it is sound practice to demand
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THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CASE. 741
proof of a new assumptive claim to such honors, before yielding
the time- con ceded authorship of two hundred years. At the
most, all that has been shown by the advocates of Bacon's claim
is that " It may have been," and that " It is barely possible that
Bacon coulcf have written the plays." But this seems very weak
in the face of that historic evidence which two centuries have
brought to us showing that Shakespeare was the author.
All men may not view this question with the aid of that pro-
fundity of literary research which Mr. Donnelly and Mr. Reed
bring to it; but there is a consensus in nature which fills man's
environment, and brings to the average reasoning faculties intui-
tive conclusions, largely satisfying the critical powers, and har-
monizing with man's reason and consciousness, as well as showing
itself to be in unison with the methods of nature's revelations,
and God's way of imparting knowledge to man. The world is
evidently very old, and human development has ever come to the
race on mysterious wings. The Homeric writings and much
other rare and choice literature are purported to be of doubtful
authorship, or to rest upon anonymous effort. The Shake-
spearean writings are no exception to this condition, and while
it may be difficult to establish historic correctness in the claims
for individual authorship, there is a maxim in nature which
gauges all precedent — to wit, the subjective or occult forces
have their place in natural law, and work certain evolutionary
conditions, such being concomitants to man in every advanced
step he makes in the evolution of his universe.
How much of man's thought, how much of the result of his
effort, should be accredited to objective action, and how much is
due to subjective adjuncts, operating conjointly with his thought
and physical actions, in any phenomenal product, is a very nice
question, and one which seems too occult for frail mortals to
determine. Yet in considering questions such as form the base
of this writing, learned and scientific men leave these condi-
tions entirely out of their debate, and form their conclusions
upon a purely material base, taking natural external results as
the only evidence to be relied upon ; while they at the same time
live and hold their reasonings within an environment partaking
largely of subjective forces and conditions, which affect every
thought, through and in which they live and write. Can it not
be reasonably certain that Shakespeare lived, wrote, and had his
objective life within such an environment, where the two ele-
mentary forces of nature, the dominant in objective life and the
controlling in subjective living, join their potent forces and give
equal opportunity for the soul to reveal its thought, and to give
through the automatic pen the writings which, some at least
believe, neither Bacon nor Shakespeare, of himself, was capable
of producing ?
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742 THE ARENA.
It would seem that nature should be accredited with the same
powers when producing a Shakespeare as when instructing a
Moses; that the same law which gave the commandments to
Moses on Mt. Sinai could give writings to more modern mediums.
If inspirational conditions were given to Elijah, why might
not such come to Shakespeare? If the olden prophets were
mediums for divine revelation, and Jesus was a medial teacher,
instructing man in the deeper truths of his spirituality, from sub-
jective promptings ; if Swedenborg was a seer, through whom the
hidden forces of nature could speak, why may not Shakespeare
have been a chosen medium by spirit egos, through which the
mighty intellects of the past ages could speak to the coming
races, both in verse and prose? It would seem self evident that
whoever or whatever force gave to the world the Shakespearean
writings, they have been embellished and beautified with the
acquisitions of all previous experiences. He who did leave man
those works, songs, and plays, drew f rom a deeper fountain of
experience than nature has before or since accorded to objective
man.
Much could be said in favor of this inquiry to show the strong
probability that neither Shakespeare nor Bacon, as men, of them-
selves, alone and unaided by the subjective forces of spirit power,
wrote the works ; but detail in either evidence or argument is
not the object of this inquiry. The writer wishes to put the
question in clear form, hence he asks : May not William Shake-
speare have been a medium — trance or inspirational or both —
through which some older spirit ego could have spoken, or written
by automatic pen, to mankind, and left to the world the so-called
Shakespearean writings, to remain forever, with the Homeric
verse and Vedic hymns, as treasures from the highest and best
thoughts of the human soul, within the domain of literature?
Surely it cannot be assumed that no tangible evidence accom-
panies a metaphysical proposition of such scope and import-
ance ; therefore in order to make the inquiry appear to be what
the hypothesis assumes it to be — to wit, tangible fact, based
upon subjective unfolding within the material world — it is well
to call to one's mind the very many results which come as fixed
phenomena from invisible causes, such results always proving the
scientific maxim that it is a product from cosmical nature, and
its development is strictly within evolutionary law, while its
methods of presentation are always from cause to effect.
Objective man is so organized that he is compelled to view all
objective things through his five physical senses. Beyond the
tests which nerve action renders to his consciousness, there can
be no material proof of any phenomenon in the physical world."
Yet does he not find a consensus within himself, the origin, cause,
and unfoldment of which his reasoning powers cannot account
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THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CASE. 743
for, nor trace back to its primitive infancy ; and which carries
the conviction to his consciousness that external things, within
his objective universe, have a subjective cosmical origin, and
grow to visible manifestation, the result being humanity and its
environing universe — occult potency being cause, and objective >
phenomena the result ?
Through a priori reasoning man finds subjective potency to be
cause to many effects, and in his inability to find any material
proof of such cause except the effect, he implicitly relies upon
the consensus within the universal consciousness, and accepts the
result. His existence here and now is a state of realization
through objective sensation, and he assumes that his life and its
environment is a fixed fact within space, controlled and main-
tained by invisible and inscrutable law ; notwithstanding he can
adduce no proof of this subjective assumption, nor of its hidden
primitive workings, which have thus clothed his objective ego
with form, thought, and consciousness. This maxim is irrevo-
cably fixed in man's being ; and the seeming changes of his
environment do not obliterate it. In this respect his develop-
ment has gone beyond objective evidence and nerve tests, and
germinating within his organism and ego, is found the fullness of
a conscious instinct which, to each individual, is proof of the
fact of life and being, with internal or subjective vision of
earlier growth, that has left results which add to his present
attainments. Because he cannot see through the walls of
objective sentient living, and observe clear outlines of every
act or thought, cause or effect, which has aided his develop-
ment into his present status — it does not in the least weaken
the claim to a knowledge of his present life and its realizations
in all of its potencies at the present moment.
Man's intuitive instinct, his consensus, although not present-
able to the world as a material witness, is none the less conclusive
to him, proving the fact of his existence, and making probable the
future continuation of his being, through like conscious growth,
which in its turn, with the change of environment which pro-
gression demands, creates and again infolds, and becomes a part
of his realized status, although he may not be able to individualize
his experience in such subjectivity when within objective life.
Such seems to be the life chain of human unfoldment; and
when the cause of certain great and grand effects is sought, as in
the Shakespearean writings, no adequate source can be found to
which man can attribute it. In seeking potent cause for such
excellency in result, it is most natural to call to our aid all visi-
ble and tangible conditions which may have contributed to or
tended, in any way, to have loft such result. And hence in
assuming the incapability of the man Shakespeare to produce
such results as the writings are found to be, it is natural to full
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744 THE ARENA.
back upon any probable catise, or competent person who may be
shown to be capable of such writing.
In this case the critic calls Sir Francis Bacon to his aid. But
with all of Bacon's known ability, there does not appear one
fact in evidence, proving his claim to the authorship. This being
the case, it turns the methods of investigation into such channels
as may, perchance, lead to the discovery of the true author.
Such new research after the author should take the investigator
over all other fields which have any reasonable probability of
containing a fact or presenting a truth, giving potency of force
or possible powers of individualization, sufficient to establish the
fact, either by itself or in union with the physical and mental
powers of William Shakespeare. The well-established fact
that the man Shakespeare was the one who first presented the
writings in question to the world, seems reasonable proof that he
was at least an agent in their production. The historic evidence
of that fact seems to be deeply rooted within the folklore of the
place of his nativity ; and even his opponents cite such evidence
to overthrow the claim to any considerable literary attainments on
the part of Shakespeare, and argue that such illiteracy as his was
incapable of giving the learned sequel.
Historic tradition, brought down through the forgotten ages,
even, is found to be so vivid and potent in its imprint upon the
human soul that it to-day furnishes much of the most reliable
evidence upon which man builds the story of his development.
' Out of the songs, the hymns, the traditional prophecies and
events of the past, there has been woven an indestructible web of
evidence which neither time, experience, nor learned criticism
has been able to annihilate; nor can it be erased from the litera-
ture of our time. Nature records her actual workings more
fully in the unwritten than through the written literature of the
race.
Man absorbs all and every excellency of nature's unfolding ;
so much so, that no known element or constituent within the
universe which is visible by chemical test may not be traced in
the constitution and makeup of man. Dissect him, physically,
and you find the constituents of his universe as the base of his •
physical being. Analyze him, mentally, and you will find every
potency of the divine creative and retentive forces in his thought
and soul. These results, lodged in his present makeup, have
come from all conditions of thought and act, throughout his
sidereal and planetary living. True, it must seem to the anthro-
pogenetic student examining man's body, brain, thought, or
soul, that much of his force comes from a subjective potency, not
transmissible in tangible material condition. How to certify
these attainments, or account for their growth within the
human consciousness, cannot be explained by any rules within
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THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CASE. 745
objective experience. Yet such consensus is a part of man's
known inheritance, and comes to him from the unknown in-
nature; such being to him life, love, and conscious existence —
the realization of which in sentient living is conclusive proof of
the reality.
On what wings do such things come to men ? Observably, by
intelligence without objective form, as in the writing by an auto-
matic pen, conveying intelligent fact, without conscious knowl-
edge of events or what is being recorded upon the paper ; and by
grand thoughts and great wisdom coming through lips where
there is an unconscious brain, as in the state of entrancement.
These are facts, known and accepted by many ; they are proven
conditions in which man frequently finds himself — not new con-
ditions, but old as well as new. Such are known to be the " ways
and means " through which has come to man very much of his
knowledge and a large portion of his choicest literature, the
Scriptures not being an exception to this rule.
In the light of these facts, and the large experience of the
human race in the acquisition of knowledge from subjective
sources, through esoteric channels, is it unreasonable to ask that
the universally accepted law of inspirational living — with auto-
matic control' of the hand, and entrancement of the individual —
be considered capable of being utilized through and under Shake-
speare's medial forces to produce the writings in question ? Cer-
tainly there is as much in man's experience and unfolding to
warrant such inquiry, as can be found in an attempt to prove
that the Shakespearean writings came from Sir Francis Bacon's
pen. A. B. Brown.
A. B. Brown believes that Shakespeare's pen, aided by occult
forces, produced the plays.
IV. HENRY IRVING.
Frankly, I have never been able to take any serious interest in
this controversy. The apex of the ludicrous was touched when
Mr. Ignatius Donnelly wrote a stupendous work to prove that
Bacon wove into Shakespeare's plays a narrative in cipher full of
historical incidents which never happened. After this, there
remains nothing for the Baconian party to achieve. They ought
to weep like Alexander because there are no more trophies.
Their condition moves me to such compassion that I w T ill make
them a present of a suggestion. Why not argue that the total
lack of imagination, of the poetic faculty, and of the sense of
humor, revealed in Bacon's published works, is a proof of his
deliberate purpose to prevent any identification of his genius
with Shakespeare's? This would be quite as convincing as the
/amous cipher.
The theory pf «> composite authorship " is a weak and waddling
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746 THE ARENA.
compromise. It seems to be founded on the idea that while the
" brilliant nobles " of Elizabeth's court contributed the scholar-
ship, Shakespeare threw in the poetry. A committee of classical
experts, with Bacon in the chair, would meet, I presume, of a
morning, discuss the rough draught of "The Tempest" or "King
Lear," and send it round to Blackfriars, where Shakesphere
would make it shipshape with a touch or two of character and
a little blank verse !
The testimony of competent witnesses in this matter is very
simple and conclusive. Shakespeare was believed to have
written his plays by his comrades and his rivals. Nobody in
his day ventured to suggest that he was trading on another
writer's brains. The man who knew him best and loved him
best, "this side idolatry," throws no suspicion on his fame.
When the Baconians can show that Ben Jonson was either a fool
or a knave, or that the whole world of players and playwrights
at that time was in a conspiracy to palm off on the ages the most
astounding cheat in history, they will be worthy of serious
attention. Henry Ibving.
Henry Irving renders his verdict in favor of defendant.
THE VOTE.
The vote on the Bacon- Shakespeare case is now in, and the
poll stands as* follows : —
I. In favor of the plaintiff : G. Kruell — one vote.
II. In favor of the defendant: Alfred Russel Wallace, the
Marquis of Lome, Edmund C. Stedman, Edmund Gosse, Rev.
C. A. Bartol, Appleton Morgan, Franklin H. Head, Luther R.
Marsh, A. A. Adee, Professor N. S. Shaler, Rev. Minot J.
Savage, Marcus J. Wright, L. L. Lawrence, William E. Sheldon,
George Makepeace Towle, Henry George, A. B. Brown, A. H. II.
Dawson, Honorable William E. Russell, Henry Irving — twenty
votes.
III. Believe in the claim of composite authorship : Rev. O. B.
Frothingham, Frances E. Wiliard — two votes.
IV. Believe that defendant did not write the plays, but not
convinced that the plaintiff was the author: Professor A. E.
Dolbear, Mrs. Mary A. Livermore — two votes.
Total vote in favor of plaintiff 1
Total vote in favor of defendant 20
Votes not counted for plaintiff or defendant . . 4
Total vote 25
Of the twenty-five jurors, twenty are in favor of Shakespearean
authorship.
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"LA CORRIVEAU."
BY LOUIS FRECHETTE.
Standing on Dufferin Terrace in Quebec, the spectator may
descry, two or three miles down the river, on the opposite shore,
the graceful, tin-covered steeple of the old parish church of St.
Joseph ; which parish, in olden days, included what is known to
us as the town of Levis. The church was built on a projecting
point facing the Falls of Montmorency, and just above the south-
ern end of the Island of Orleans. The queen's highway, after
passing the church, mounts gradually upward until it reaches an
elevation on which, a few years ago, stood a Doric pillar sur-
mounted by a gilded cross. And about this hill my story is
centred.
One morning, during the spring of 1849, Bourassa, the parish
digger, was at work on the eastern corner of the graveyard
which surrounded the parish church of St. Joseph. Suddenly
his spade grated against something which was neither stone nor
wood. Whatever curiosity he may have felt, his day's work was
before him, and he went on with his labor, until bit by bit he
unearthed a curious framework of solid iron, the whole present-
ing the horrible suggestion of a human body. There were head,
trunk, and limbs, all outlined in heavy iron bands riveted and
held together by crosspieces, and surmounted by a hook turning
in a socket; and within this cage were a few mouldering bones.
The bones were examined and pronounced to be those of a
woman. The cage was in a perfect state of preservation, and,
though evidently embedded in the earth for many years, had but
slightly suffered from rust or decay. Whence did this weird
network come ? What grewsome mystery was connected with
the forging of these iron bands ?
An oft-recounted story among the people of the place, and
learned in their youth from their fathers by the oldest inhabi-
tants, supplied the answer to these questions. The fell machine
bore witness to the barbarous usages of the past. It was the
remnant of a judicial drama converted into a legend added to
the store of nursery and fireside tales, in which it held a gloomy
part, filling hearts with dismay, and haunting the consciences of
the guilty like a nightmare — an old relic reputed to have been
747
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748 THE ARENA.
carried away long, long ago, with its horrible contents, by Satan
himself, to the nethermost depths of the bottomless pit. Of this
last fantastical feature the legend was, of course, shorn by the
discovery of the gravedigger. On the other hand, the event
could not fail to awaken the interest of amateurs of archaeo-
logical folklore. Their inquiries led them back to the previous
century ; and tradition, aided by documentary scraps found here
and there, revealed the following facts in their thrilling and
dramatic nakedness.
Just one hundred years before the date above referred to —
in 1749 — on a bright day in spring, the little village of St.
Vallier, lying some twenty miles lower down than St. Joseph, was
given up to festivity. A joyous crowd, in Sunday attire, flocked
to the door of the parish church amid laughter, gossiping, and
pleasantry, while the new bell,* just imported from old France,
rang out a merry wedding peal for the first time. All the people
of the Fort — to use an expression of the time — were in high
glee, quite ready to deck out the only street of the village, and
to strew the stone steps of the church with flowers, over which
her father led the beauty of ten parishes around, now blushing
and timid — Marie- Josette Corriveau, the bride.
Not few were those who envied the soldierly-looking young
farmer who came last in the procession, also arm in arm with his
father, and who entered the little church, a happy victor of a
tourney in which the richest and handsomest lads of the sur-
rounding country had entered the lists. He was rich, handsome,
and a favorite, the more so that he bore his triumph with so
much modesty, and every one looked kindly on his happiness.
His happiness ! — for eleven years, but one cloud seemed to
hang over it. Unlike other Canadian couples, whose union to
this day is always so fruitful, the young people lived alone, and
no cluster of rosy cheeks gathered round their solitary hearth.
One morning, the neighbors were astounded to see the young
woman rush in to them, dismayed, dishevelled, and apparently
crazed with terror, telling them, amid choking sobs, that she
had found her husband lying dead on his bed. As we have said,
the deceased was universally beloved, and so was mourned for by
all. All shared the grief of his family, and publicly marked their
sympathy for the bereaved young widow.
The latter's sorrow seemed so natural, that no suspicion arose
against her ; — none at first, until, after the brief space of three
months, to the astonishment of the whole parish, she married a
youth known by the name of Louis Dodier. This occasioned
some gossip, and the couple were thenceforward closely watched
by the neighbors.
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"LA CORRIVEAU." 749
Three years passed away, however, without any further inci-
dent. All suspicions had been gradually laid, when, on the
morning of Jan. 27, 1763, Louis Dodier's body was found in his
stable, almost under his horse's hoofs, his skull apparently frac-
tured by a kick from the animal. This time, the attention of the
authorities was dtywn to the matter, and a judicial investigation
was held. It showed that the mortal wound had not been
inflicted by a kick from a shod horse, but by a blow with a pitch-
fork, which was found close by, stained with blood. The body
of the first husband was then exhumed, and a minute examination
of it showed that, in this case, death had resulted from the pour-
ing of molten lead into the ears of the unfortunate man, doubtless
during his sleep. From the whole evidence, the guilt of Marie-
Josette Corriveau — in so far at least as the murder of her
second husband was concerned — remained no longer a question.
The trial took place before a court martial, the only tribunal
then existing, as Canada had been ceded to England by France
but a few days after the crime. A curious feature of the case
was that the prisoner was tried in the name of the king of Eng-
land, and — to use the technical phrase — " against the crown
and dignity" of the king of France.
The evidence at the trial was crushing. It consisted princi-
pally in the declarations of a young girl named Isabelle Sylvain,
which, though circumstantial, were conclusive, and sentence of
death was about to be pronounced on the prisoner. Before this
was done, there was a sudden stir in the room, and the father of
the prisoner, a white-haired old man, overwhelmed with anguish,
and despairing of any other means to save his daughter, arose
suddenly before the court, confessed himself to be the murderer
of Louis Dodier, and surrendered himself as such. His unnatural
child consented to the sacrifice, and impassively allowed the
supreme sentence to be pronounced against this martyr of
paternal affection.
The following is the original text of the judgment. It is
copied from the draft found among papers belonging to the
Nairne family, at Murray Bay, and was reproduced by Mr.
Aubert de Gasp6, in the explanatory notes appended to his very
interesting book, " Les Anciens Canadiens " : —
General Order. Quebec, April 10, 1763.
The Court Martial, whereof Lieutenant-Colonel Morris was President,
having tried Joseph Corriveau and Marie-Josette Corriveau, Canadians,
for the murder of Louis Dodier, and also Isabelle Sylvain, a Canadian,
for perjury on the same trial, the Governor doth ratify and confirm the
following sentence : —
That Joseph Corriveau having been found guilty of the charge
brought against him, he is therefore adjudged to be hanged for the
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750 THE ABENA.
The Court is likewise of opinion that Marie-Josette Corriveau, his
daughter, and widow of the late Dodier, is guilty of knowing of the said
murder, and doth therefore adjudge her to receive sixty lashes with a
cat-o'-nine-tails on her bare back, at three different places, viz., under
the gallows, upon the market place of Quebec, and in the parish of St,
Vallier, twenty lashes at each place, and to be branded in the left hand
with the letter M.
The Court doth also adjudge Isabelle Sylvain to 'receive sixty lashes
with a cat-o'-nine-tails on her bare back, in the same manner and at the
same time and places as Marie-Josette Corriveau, and to be branded in
the left hand with the letter P.
The unexpected confession . of the old man had of course
destroyed this poor girl's evidence ; her declarations had been
ascribed to motives of hatred for the accused ; she was convicted
of perjury, and sentenced accordingly.
Old Corriveau, bearing the weight of threescore years and ten
as well as the load of infamy he had voluntarily shouldered,
walked off to jail beside his daughter, who, almost crazed with
delight to have escaped the gallows, did not even turn a look of
pity or gratitude on him.
The superior of the Quebec Jesuits at that time, the Reverend
Father Clapion, was called to attend the self-convicted murderer.
After hearing his confession, he impressed on him that, even had
he the right to dispose of his own life, he could not, as a Chris-
tian, cause an unfortunate girl to suffer for a crime of which she
was wholly innocent. The devoted father had generously given
his life to save his daughter's, but he would not sacrifice his soul,
and the real facts were communicated to the authorities.
A fresh trial took place ; and the following sentence was sub-
stituted for the first. It is taken from the same source : —
Quebec, April 15, 17G3.
General Order.
The Court Martial, whereof Lieutenant^Colonel Morris was President,
dissolved.
The general Court Martial having tried Marie-Josette Corriveau for
the murder of her husband Dodier, the Court finding her guilty, the
Governor (Murray) doth ratify and confirm the following sentence:
That Marie-Josette Corriveau do suffer death for the same, and her body
to be hung in chains, wherever the Governor shall think fit.
(Signed) Thomas Mills, T. Major.
La Corriveau — to use the name handed down to us by the
legend — was for many years supposed to have been locked up
alive in the famous iron cage, and there starved to death; but
this was not the case. She was hanged on the Plains of i\bra-
ham. After the execution, the body was encased in the cage,
which was hung upon a tall gibbet on the heights of Levis,
at cross-roads half way between the villages of Bienville and
Lauzon.
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"LA CORRIVEAU." 751
The terror inspired by this frightful sight, in those days of
superstition, can readily be imagined. The body confined in this
horrible cage turned and swung with outstretched arms, a lure to
birds of prey, and soon became the subject of a thousand awful
tales. According to popular rumor, La (Jorriveau used to come
down from her gibbet to track the benighted habitants on their
way home. When darkness was thickest, she would steal into
the churchyard, and, tearing open some fresh-made grave with
her iron arms, would glut her horrible appetite. The bodies of
impenitent souls were declared to be her property by right. At
sunset, doors were solidly barred for miles around. Wherever
the spectre halted in its wanderings, the spot was cursed and was
sure to be the scene of dreadful mishap, until the priest had by
exorcism removed the bane.
Under the gibbet the grass was scorched to the root. Here
goblins, evil spirits, and loiips-garous met for the celebration of
their diabolical mysteries. Many trustworthy persons had seen
gigantic black brutes of hideous shape stand there on their hind
legs, and grow and grow in height until their snouts reached
the suspended skeleton, and whispered fearful unknown secrets
in its ear.
At other times, 'twas said, specially on Saturdays, when mid-
night tolled from the belfry tower of the lofty citadel of Quebec,
the gibbet became silent, and, gliding slowly through the inky
darkness, a strange and formidable phantom might be seen to
make its way to the riverside, adding at each heavy step the
clinking of chains and fetters to the horrors of the night. Those
who still happened to be awake in the neighborhood fell on their
knees, crossed themselves tremblingly, and prayed. It was La
Corriveau going to keep vigil and dance a saraband with the
sorcerers and witches of the Island of Orleans — les sorciers de
Vile, as they were called.
Imagine the cyclops of infernal aspect, with a mouth split
from ear to ear, with a solitary rhinoceros tooth, movable
at will from one jaw to the other ; monster heads, each with a
single eye blazing like a forge fire under a blood-oozing eyelid ;
toad- like pustulous abdomens, long and filmy frog's feet, arms
like immense spider legs provided with lobster claws ; add to all
this the horns of a bull, forked tails twisting and wriggling like a
bundle of snakes, and a breath rolling in sulphurous vapor from
their nostrils, polluting all the atmosphere for acres around.
At stated hours of the night, these ghastly beings congregated
on the south beach of the island, in the hollow of a dark cove
called St. Patrick's Hole— Troit <le Saint- Patrice. There they
built large fires, and, by the rod glare, screeching, yelping, howl-
ing, and distorting themselves in all manner of shapes, they
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752 THE ARENA.
clattered, rattled, and made an infernal hubbub, while a still-
born infant roasted on a spit to be served up at their abominable
banquet. And then, leaping, waddling, tramping, and stamping,
they would squeal out some dreadful strain, to which the people
on the opposite shore listened with terror in their hearts.
We find, in Mr. de Gaspe's works, the text of one of these
satanic compositions. I give it here in the original form — for
the Sorciers de Vile were French, of course : —
(Test notre terre d' Orleans (bis)
Qu'est le pays des beaux enfants.
Toure-loure,
Dansons a l'entour!
Toure-loure,
Dansons a l'entour!
Venez-y tous en survenants (bis),
Sorciers, lizards, crapauds, serpents,
Toure-loure,
Dansons a l'entour!
Toure-loure,
Dansons a 1' en tour I
Venez-y tous en survenants (6is),
Impies, ath£es, et mc*cr£ants.
Toure-loure,
Dansons a Ten tour!
Toure-loure,
Dansons a l'entour! #
The following is an attempt at the translation of this wonder-
ful specimen of phantasmagoric poetry : —
The Isle of Orleans is the place
Where handsome gallants grow apace;
With whoop and bound
We'll dance our round;
With whoop and bound
We'll dance our round!
Come one, come all, nor wait a call, y
Serpents, efts, tods, warlocks all!
With whoop and bound
We'll dance our round;
With whoop and bound
We'll dance our round!
Come one, come all, nor wait a call,
Rake-hells, pagans, outcasts all!
With whoop and bound
We'll dance our round;
With whoop and bound
We'll dance our round!
Such were the Sorciers de Pile, renowned far and wide. It
was in this company that La Corriveau was said to spend an
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"LA COBBIVEAU." 753
hour or two, every Saturday night, as a reprieve from her lonely
and terrible confinement. Before the break of dawn, she stole
back to her dread station.
This could not last forever. One Sunday morning the parish-
ioners, on their way to mass, no longer saw the skeleton swinging
from its hook. Rumor said the monster had been carried oft by
the devil. The truth is that the barbarous exhibition was not
only a loathsome sight and an object of terror to the inhabitants
of the place, but the alarm had spread to the surrounding
localities, so that people ceased, as far as possible, to use the
Levis road ; farmers of the lower parishes took their produce to
market by the river, and none travelled that way who could help
it — all of which was very harmful to the locality thus threatened
with desolation and ruin.
At last the interest of the ferrymen and tavernkeepers had got
the better of their fears, and one night a few bold and hardy
youths, less superstitious than the rest of the population — with
great secrecy of course, for fear of the authorities — had climbed
the gibbet, unhooked the cage, and buried it beside the church-
yard wall, within the space allotted to criminals and unidentified
drowned bodies.
When the parish church was rebuilt, in 1830, the cemetery was
extended in that direction, and this accounts for the finding of
the strange relic within the sacred precincts.
As there were no newspapers printed iu the country in those
days, ho report of the memorable trial was published, and the
accounts of it handed down by grandmothers to little ones
greatly exaggerated the particulars. In course of time, the
celebrated murderess was said to have killed not two but several
husbands; and in 1849, when the cage was found, the number
reached was seven or eight at least. Of course descriptions of
the unfortunate individuals, including age, appearance, size, color
of hair, etc., were given in full detail, together with all the
circumstances attending their assassination.
The rush of visitors attracted by the unexpected discovery
lasted a couple of weeks. But suddenly, though safely locked
up under the vestryroom of the church, the cage vanished once
more.
The devil this time was called P. T. Barnum. The celebrated
showman had secured it, in perfect good faith, no doubt, at the
hands of some unscrupulous speculator; and it soon became
known that the old cage was to be seen in his museum at New
York, the duty of explaining its legend being entrusted, some
people said, to Washington's nurse, on exhibition there at the
time. When this noted establishment was burned, twenty-five
years ago, the famous cage was once more lost to sight ; but if
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754 THE AMJNA.
you should happen, gentle reader, to visit the Boston Museum,
you may discover, in a corner often passed over by the general
public, a glass case standing upright, and within it a mass of
iron, broken up, twisted, tangled, and half eaten by rust and fire.
A simple ticket bears the laconic inscription : —
FROM QUEBEC.
At first sight, the mysterious object looks somewhat like a
strange suit of armor, reduced by time to a shapeless heap ; but
on close examination, it gradually assumes the form of a black
and ghastly skeleton, half disjointed and crumbling to pieces —
all that is left of the famous Cage de la Corriveau.
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AIT OMEN.
BY E. E. E. McJIMSET.
I cannot ope the volume of the years,
To sing prophetic of what lies before,
Nor with divining eyes foreread the lore
Of hidden purpose, which time only clears;
But yet, methinks, these are presageful fears,
Which mark the distance widen, more and more,
Between the rich and the oppressed poor,
Who plead to them unanswered through salt tears.
Then shall Hate's daggers hurtle through the air,
And, swift as light, red Terror sway our lands,
When those in bondage shall put off their chains.
For, not in patience will souls always bear
The burthens sore heaped on by unkind hands; —
Oh! not forever will men hush their pains.
755
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THREE GENTLEWOMEN AND A LADY.
BY MABY JAMESON JXJDAH.
One winter afternoon three friends sat together sewing. It
was the week before Christmas, and they were busy preparing
for that season. Some packages, be-ribboned and addressed, lay
on the table in the middle of the drawing-room in the shadow of
a cluster of long-stemmed red roses. Other parcels, almost
ready to be put with them, filled a chair near one of the ladies.
As they pursued their pretty work, they talked together with
the playful candor of bright women who are fond of each other.
But although their conversation was intelligent and free, there
was a sort of repression about it which stands among American
women as a sign of high breeding ; and the same thing was to
be noticed in the composure of their attitudes and even in the
simple elegance of their attire. It was an easy guess that any
of them would regard a manifestation of mental or moral vehe-
mence as evidence of a lack of culture.
They had been speaking of a woman whom they all knew.
Then, as the sun went low behind the snow-capped turrets of the
house opposite, they dropped their work and talked, not of one
woman, but of womankind.
" I wonder if it is true that all women are at heart pretty much
alike ? " asked Theodora.
"For my part," said Daphne, "I see no more reason for
believing that women's hearts are alike than that their minds are,
which is absurd."
U I think we are alike," said Amy. "There are the same
depths and shallows in every woman's nature. What fills a
depth — love or religion or jealousy — is of course decided by
circumstances or education."
Daphne objected: "It is easy to say that, but you cannot
prove it. There are a very few instinctive passions, such, for
instance, as maternal affection (which even Theodora must admit
she has in common with lower animals), that we all may feel;
but I think it probable that the highly developed sensitiveness
which alone can engender complex and delicate emotion is the
result of culture, either personal or inherited."
" I don't like to agree with you," said Theodora. " For one
thing, such an idea seems irreligious."
756
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THREE GENTLEWOMEN AND A LADY. 757
"Yes; that's your only reason," laughed Daphne under her
breath.
" I have known many women intimately," said Amy, " and I
am sure that no class monopolizes the capacity for high and
intense feeling."
" I like the way you two talk ! " exclaimed Daphne. " Whom
did either of you ever know outside of your relatives and visit-
ing lists?"
Theodora ventured to respond that she had gone among the
poor a great deal.
" No doubt," commented Daphne with scorn ; " the worthy
poor! that is to say, the poor made in your own image."
" And I," asserted Amy, " may have learned something from
books. You know I read anything that tells of humanity."
"Yes, I know," said Daphne, "you pride yourself on your
love for your kind, and you lie on the sofa all day reading stories
about French and Russian women. I don't say the stories are
not true, but how do you know they are ? "
"How does one know anything?" asked Theodora. "One
sees by one's imagination; one tests what is seen by one's
reason."
" That sounds very grand ; it's a pity there's no sense in it ! "
said Daphne. " For my part, I wish I could know for myself."
She paused, laughed, and then, with a look of defiance on her
pretty face, began to speak more earnestly than before. " The
truth is, I just long to know something outside of myself. I am
lonely on our little desert island of culture. If there is any
Humanity in the howling savages on shore, I want to shake
hands with It. Maybe I wouldn't like it, but I'm sick for a
chance to try. But there's no use hoping for such a chance —
none of us will ever get it."
Amy began to speak, and then hesitated. "I do not know
that it would interest you — Last summer I met — But perhaps
it's too long a story."
" Pray tell it," said Theodora politely.
" Yes," said Daphne, " pray tell it. But I don't believe you
ever met anybody who was not introduced to you by your mother
or your sister-in-law." She smiled lovingly at her as she spoke.
Amy blushed a little as she began. "A year ago last Sep-
tember I had to go to Chicago alone. It was necessary that I
should change from one train to another on the way, and I was
to wait in Plymouth from noon until six in the afternoon. There
was nothing alarming about this, for Plymouth is as quiet an old
place as one could wish to find."
" I know it," interrupted Daphne. " The cleanest little town !
There are sandy streets densely shaded by beautiful maple trees,
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and here and there a mountain-ash bright with clusters of scarlet
berries."
" My husband had told me just what to do," continued Amy.
" I was to go from the station to the La Fayette House, and stay
there until time for the next train. This house is an old place
which is highly thought of by the few travellers — mostly lawyers
— who have occasion to stop in the little town. It is more like
an English inn than one would think possible, with not one
modern improvement, and yet much homely comfort.
u I walked from the station to the hotel. The day was beauti-
ful. At the door the landlord met me with hospitable warmth.
I was late for their regular dinner ; but his daughter, a comely old
maid, took me into the dining-room, seated me by a vine-shaded
window, and served me with simple dainties — red raspberries
fresh from the tiny garden just outside, a pitcher of yellow
cream, and later a little cake hot from the oven — the * try-cake,'
she said, « of one sister was making for tea.'
" When my luncheon was finished, I went across the hall and
looked about before I should settle myself for the afternoon with
a novel. I delighted in the room; the striped paper on the
walls; the pictures high-hung and tilted forward; the clean
Nottingham curtains that shook in the sweet air."
" You don't say anything about the tin placque with a one-
legged stork on it," said Daphne.
" No ; because I didn't see it. But there was an old glass fruit
dish full of mignonette on the centre table. The room seemed
like the rest of the house — sweet and restful, as if it were the
index of simple, undisturbed lives.
" In a far corner, with her back to me, sat a lady busy with some
needlework. She had the appearance of being at home. Her
work-basket was beside her. I did not look at her twice, but
opened my book and read for awhile, forgetting there was any one
there but myself. A half -hour, perhaps, had passed. I had put
aside the book, and was resting in the sweet quiet of the place.
The lady rose and walked across the room. As she moved, I
looked at her, at first listlessly, then astounded. I could not see
her face ; but her dress, her figure, above all, her carriage, fairly
took my breath away! Never have I seen anything like the
grace of her moving. I know now that the most beautiful
dancing in the world is not so beautiful as — is not to be com-
pared with — the rhythmical grace possible in the human walk.
I felt an actual pang, as at the silencing of sweet music, when she
seated herself. Then I noticed her costume. You may smile,
Daphne, but I have seldom seen a woman so charmingly dressed.
My own little bravery seemed tawdry and common beside the
fashion of her attire. I almost thought I was dreaming."
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THREE GENTLEWOMEN AND A LADY. 759
"And were you not?" said Daphne. "You know I've been
in Plymouth myself ! "
" Who was she ? " inquired Theodora.
"That was what I exercised myself to think. I concluded
that she must belong to one of the wealthy Sevier County
families, and was perhaps waiting here after a summer's absence
for her house to be opened. But I wondered that in that case I
had not heard of her. She was sewing on some fancy work, a
strip of pink velvet cut in deep points along one edge, which
she embroidered with silver thread and jewel- like beads. She
dropped her thimble and rose to look for it. I saw it in a
corner. Then we fell into conversation. Soon I was seated at
her side counting the beads for her as she used them. I know
I can never make you understand the simple elegance of that
woman's manner — her grace, her dignity."
" First," said Daphne, " I'd like to understand something about
your manner and its dignity. Are you in the habit of sitting
down to sew with every woman you meet in a hotel parlor ? "
"You know very well that I am not. It was her fineness
which made it possible. It seemed just the natural thing to do.
There was no making one's self common possible in her society."
"Oh, well," said Daphne, "I suppose it was not so very bad for
you to get suddenly intimate with her. I know who she was —
that young Mrs. Ridley whose husband is minister to China."
" No, my dear," answered Amy with a tantalizing smile, " she
was not Mrs. Ridley. Of course I myself was wondering who
she was, though the instant charm of her presence kept me from
thinking definitely about it as we talked. By and by I carelessly
asked her what her work (the strip of velvet) was for. What
do you think she said? — you, Daphne, who know everything?"
"For the mantel-piece in her own little sitting-room, of
course," said Daphne.
" Not at all 1 Without haste or hesitation, as simply as pos-
sible, she said, * For my husband's costume.' "
"Well," said Daphne, "I suppose they were going to have
some private theatricals."
"I said something implying that. She looked at me with
mild surprise. * Ah,' said she, * I fancy Raymond would find
them very tiresome.' Then we went back to what we had been
talking about. She told me of a winter journey in Russia ; how
her husband piled furs over her till she thought she would
smother; of the palaces and their conservatories; of a certain
princess's gowns; of market scenes, and fetes on the ice, — all
this, and more, with such gayety and wit, such pretty accompani-
ment of gesture and changing color and airy mimicry, that
nothing could have been more charming."
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760 THE ARENA.
Daphne mused, "The Reed Dudleys live somewhere up
there ; they are often abroad."
" She was not one of the Reed Dudleys," answered Amy.
" Well, then," said Daphne, " you deserved no such luck ; and
how it ever happened in Plymouth, and in September, is past
me — but she was an actress or a singer."
" She was neither ; a thought of that sort did occur to me for
a minute, but I rejected it even before I found out positively that
it was not true. One look at her face would have convinced you
that never since she was born had that rose-petal skin been
touched by paint or powder. Have I told you what she was
like?"
" No," said Daphne, " I thought you spared us purposely."
"I suppose she was very pretty?" said Theodora.
" I do not think she was ; but she was a revelation of what a
woman may be at the high mark of physical perfection. She did
not need to be pretty. She had in her appearance a quality that
transcends any beauty of feature."
" Oh, yes," said Daphne ; " goodness — I used to hear that
sort of talk when I was a little girl. I thought it was out of
date now."
" I do not mean goodness ; though, for that matter, her face
did show that. I am trying to describe a quality that is as much
a material attribute as beauty is. She was the incarnation of
physical well being, the climax of perfect health. She fairly
glowed with it; an atmosphere of it seemed to surround her.
Even to be near her was to feel a health-giving influence.
Looking at her one would say that from head to foot, there was
not a muscle, not a nerve, not a drop of blood, but was working
in absolute order as God meant it to work. I never thought till
I saw her what physical perfection might be — not physical
beauty, which beside it is a poor, scrappy affair, but strong,
flawless vitality. I tell you this fair creature made other women
show beside her as deformities — cripples."
" How you must admire Mr. Corbett ! " said Daphne pensively.
" Nonsense," answered Amy. " He has nothing to do with it.
A man of that kind is the owner of certain abnormally developed
muscles — to a degree the result of special training. This young
woman seemed to have blossomed into perfection as a flower
does.
" But I was telling you of our talk. She mentioned her hus-
band again, and said he had gone to some small towns near by
on professional business. She had stayed in Plymouth awhile
the year before when he was on a similar journey ; he felt it safe
to leave her there because the people in the house were such
good, kindly folks."
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THREE GENTLEWOMEN AND A LADY. 761
" And then," said Daphne, " I suppose you asked this United
States senator's wife what her husband's line of trade was ! "
" Not quite that, but something like it, I'm afraid. She
answered me at once."
" She answered you as you deserved, I hope," said Daphne.
" Daphne, are you not ashamed of yourself ! " exclaimed Theo-
dora. " You know you would have asked her flatly in the first
five minutes ! "
" She looked up at me with a smile," continued Amy, " and she
said, * Will it seem vain for me to say, what our agent has printed
on all his letterheads, that my husband, Raymond Mersac, and I
are the leading cannon-ball artists in the world V ' "
"And what," said Theodora calmly, "is a cannon-ball artist?"
"I'll tell you," cried Daphne. "A cannon-ball artist — oh,
why was I not in Plymouth that day ? — a cannon-ball artist is a
lady, clad in tights, who is shot out of an imitation cannon —
-^ny* y ou never deserved this; you could not appreciate it —
shot out of an imitation cannon with a spring high into the air,
where she catches the hands of a gentleman who is at the
moment suspended by the knees, head down, from a trapeze —
that is a little swing fastened on a tight rope ! Amy, it has been
the dream of my life to meet, to actually know, one of these
circus people! And now it has happened to you I It is too
much!"
"I can understand," said Theodora, "that one might be
curious, not about the individuals, but about their habits. I con-
fess that I cannot see how a person living such a life as that from
childhood (and I believe that only long training makes such feats
possible) could have any of the womanly charm that Amy says
belonged to her Madame Mersac."
" I do not ask you to understand it," said Amy, " and I do not
know that her life had anything to do with her personality, though
probably it had preserved for her the transcendent physical en-
dowment with which she must have been born."
" Well, I hope you asked her a thousand questions ! " exclaimed
Daphne.
"No doubt I would have expected myself to, had I antici-
pated such a meeting; but in her presence one was not tempted
to the impertinence of questioning. That would have been im-
possible. However, I was with her for several hours. I saw
that she was drawn to me as I was to her. It seemed just the
natural thing to talk freely, and by and by we gave ourselves to*
confidences as children do, or as young girls will in the first
abandonments of intimacy.
"What she told me of herself was in substance this: Her
parents died when she was three years old. They had been
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762 THE AltENA.
professional acrobats. Her father was English, her mother
French. They had no relatives. At their death the little
Leonie was taken in charge by an old Frenchman and his wife,
who had some little employment at a zoological garden near
London, and who kept a sort of training school for acrobats.
They must have been a very gentle, kind old pair. They gave
her the best training their knowledge could secure. Her exercise,
her food, her hours of rest, were carefully (and, she said, lovingly)
arranged for her from her earliest recollection. Except the
hours when she was being taught the details of her profession,
she spent almost all her time out of doors. She had no play-
mates ; she said she never wanted any. The other students at
the training school were all older than she while she was a child ;
and after she was ten, she was so much more proficient in the
feats of her profession than the others, that she had her lessons
alone.
" I asked her if masters were not at times cruel, and if, when
she was a child, she was not frightened at the danger of the
exercises. She said she supposed trainers were unkind some-
times, but she fancied not often, even if they were by nature
bad-tempered. « A master,' said she, * wants, more than anything
else, that his pupils should do him credit. Every one knows that
nothing is done well under compulsion. When there is one
trace of fear in the heart, one can't think ; one can't act ; one can
do nothing really very good. For my own part,' said she, « I was
never set to do a special feat for which I was not already so well
prepared that it was easy. It was a delightful pastime, the
reward often of months of work. This routine work was never
hard, and only tiresome because it lasted so long; but one
came to do it as one might dance — without thinking much
about it."'
"I suppose," said Theodora, "that those nets that are hung
under the performers give them confidence when they are poised
high in the air."
" I said that. She was very engaging and sweet in her desire
that I should not guess what a primary sort of question that was ;
but her answer was clear. The nets gave no confidence, because
one never could walk on a tight rope at all until one had forgotten
all about the elevation of the rope. The first thing to learn was
to feel that the rope was not a rope stretched in mid-air, but
a line drawn flat on the surface of the earth. Consequently, the
net made no difference one way or the other. With it she
merely exercised on a line that rested on a surface covered with
netting. As she was saying this, she stopped suddenly with
a radiant smile. Then she said, « I should tell you that Raymond
does not agree with me about this.'
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THREE GENTLEWOMEN AND A LADT. 763
" 4 He prefers a netting under him ? ' said I.
44 4 Oh, no,' she laughingly answered ; 4 but he not only prefers,
he insists on one under me. He sees to it himself at every
performance. The canvas men I am sure hate him. The whole
company laughs. Sometimes, when the netting has been mislaid,
he will not let me appear, and has in consequence stormy inter-
views with the manager. I thought it a little babyish of him at
first — he is so brave for himself, and he knows so well my
strength and confidence. I said so to him' — Here she stopped.
" 4 And what did he say, my dear ? ' I asked, with courage born
of our intimacy.
44 She spoke gravely : * He said, " Should I see you in great
danger, Leonie, it might not kill me, but I think it would." ' "
" She had lived so quietly with the old French couple," said
Theodora, " where did she get her husband ? "
44 This is what she told me," continued Amy : 4 I have been
married four years, and I can hardly remember when I did not
know that I was to marry Raymond. This always made me
very happy when I thought of it, and I tried hard to be good so
that he might be pleased with me. He is ten years older than I,
and was a relative of my dear master. When he had a vacation
he came to see us. Sometimes, not often, he brought me a gift;
and he always talked to me so sensibly, and yet so entertainingly,
that it seemed to me no company could be so delightful as his.
And then he makes one feel when he is gone that one must try
to be kinder and more unselfish so as to be like him. I thought
there was no wiser or wittier man in the world, and no finer
gentleman. I think so still,' she added simply."
44 What did she know about gentlemen ? " asked Daphne.
" Nothing except what she had learned from books. She had
met a good many men of the world, she said, but she had the
idea that they were rude and silly. She suggested an ingenious
explanation — that people of wealth, not being forced to be con-
stantly together, as working people are, are not obliged to learn
to control themselves and be polite for their mutual comfort ; so
they should be excused for little rudenesses."
44 This is important, if true," said Daphne ; " I must think of
it!"
Amy continued: "As we talked, I came to see that between
Madame Mersac and her husband there was a most tender union.
It was a rare chance that had united two people so sweet, so
refined in feeling, and so untouched by what we call the realities
of life. They seemed to dwell in the calm centre that is in the
midst of a whirlpool, and they were as alone as Adam and Eve
in Paradise. She told me that they had never had an intimate
friend ; their whole life was in each other. This was not a tri-
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764 THE ARENA.
uraph of love over other feelings ; it was a love that left no room
for other feelings. No doubt there are many people who are
capable of such a passion, but I don't think they often marry
each other."
a Well, it is saddening," said Daphne, " to think that wedded
love in its highest, purest form can only exist between a gentle-
man and a lady who are shot out of a cannon at each other, and
who enjoy hanging by their toes from tight ropes."
Amy continued : " I do not say anything so absurd as that the
calling of these two made them what they were. I do think
that a healthful existence, away from the keen intellectual strife
that most of us are a part of, might nourish a simple and faithful
spirit ; but I cannot think of Madame Mersac as belonging to one
order or another. She was nature's own."
"You said she was witty and vivacious," said Theodora; " but
had she any education ? "
" As we count education she probably had almost none ; and
yet, as results go, she was not behind some highly educated
women. She knew French perfectly — beautiful French, too. I
suppose she had a natural aptitude for language, for her English
was very pleasing. Apparently her words were chosen with
regard to their finest meaning, and not, as ours sometimes are, in
conformity to a passing fashion. She had read a great many
books, but she knew nothing of magazines or newspapers ; and
she had a very bright and active mind. Apart from what she
said, her manner of speaking was that of a highly cultivated
person. Her master had a friend, an old dramatic teacher, who
had instructed some of the greatest of English and French actors.
This man had given her lessons in pronouncing and enunciation.
Every sentence came from her lips with a high-bred accuracy
that gave it a charm quite independent of its meaning." But
everything about her was fine and delicate ; her accent was only
part of it!"
" Did she have any curiosity about your life, such as you felt
about hers? " asked Theodora.
" Yes; but I do not think her interest was as — morbid, shall
I say? She did ask me many questions, but I fancy they were
prompted more by her liking for me than by any curiosity. It
was a startling experience. You do not know what an embarrass-
ing thing it is to hold such a life as ours up to the inspection of a
sensible person from another world. She wanted to know some-
thing of the pursuits of a person who had no special avocation.
She had thought it might be very pleasant, she said, but that one
would have to decide on ways in which to spend the time
profitably. She asked me what i*did.
" i Oh, I keep house,' I said.
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THREE GENTLEWOMEK AOT> A LADY. 705
ui Surely,' she answered, <I might have known that; and it
most take thought and much time. Raymond is a very good
cook ; he has taught me how to prepare several dainties. When
we have a chance I cook something and we have Sifite. It must
be very pleasant to have one's husband and children come to the
table every day to compliment one's successes.'
" « No — I don't cook,' said I.
" She looked a little surprised for an instant. * I see I was
thinking of a simpler life, probably, than yours. Of course there
is no reason why a woman should cook when she can afford to
hire the services of some one who can do it equally well. I can
fancy there are many things one might better save one's time
for — sewing, teaching the children, visiting the poor, and the
like.'
u I was getting desperate. i My dear,' I said, « I neither sew,
nor teach the children, nor visit the poor, and yet I think I am
always busy.'
" * What do you do ? ' she had to ask.
« < Well, I make visits and receive them ' — i Ah, but you have
many friends, no doubt,' she smilingly interrupted — < and,' con-
tinued I, < I go out and buy things. ' "
"Did you tell her that you improved your mind?" asked
Daphne dryly; "because, if you did, she might have thought
you were chaffing her."
Amy gave her an indulgent smile as she continued: "We
talked all that long, quiet afternoon of more subjects than I can
recount. We talked as women do who feel perfectly at ease and
happy with each other; of large questions, and of the merest
trifles ; and with every sentence I felt that this was the friend I
had dreamed of — a woman who was utterly congenial and yet
inspiririgly different.
" The time came for me to go to the station. She put on her
hat and walked with me. I shall never forget how she looked
in the low afternoon sunlight. Her flesh seemed of half crystal-
line texture, like a perfect fruit or flower. Other women give
you the impression of being clothes all the way through, like a
rag doll. Leonie moved like a living, glowing statue draped in
soft fabrics that covered her, but were no more a part of her
than are the clouds part of the moon that they veil. Once I
slipped on the board walk. She put her arm around me for an
instant. Her touch was magnetic — life giving.
" The train came in ; we stood in silence ; she held my hands
tightly ; she looked straight into my eyes, and with a word we
parted. Oh, how sweet she was ! "
" Have you ever heard from her since ? " asked Theodora.
" That is what I want to tell you. I knew she had gone West
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with her husband. I meant to write to her. I meant surely to
see her" —
Here she paused. Daphne, looking keenly at her, evidently
saw something unusual in her manner, for her own face assumed
an expression of tender anxiety. Theodora's eyes were fixed on
the fire. In a moment Amy continued : —
"Last Christmas morning, in the telegraphic news, in the
morning paper, I read an item. It was about this: —
Denver, December 24: — Raymond Mersac, an acrobat who has lately
been performing at the Grand Opera House, committed suicide at his
hotel at eight o'clock this evening. He had been in Leadville on
business for the past week, and, returning at six to spend Christmas
with his wife, to whom he is said to have been passionately devoted,
found that she had taken poison and had died a few minutes before
his arrival. In a moment of temporary insanity, he shot himself through
the heart, dying instantly.
" I found in a Chicago paper some fuller details. Leonie had
been in a hotel with other members of the company during
her husband's absence. The devotion of the two to each other
was a subject of jesting among their associates. The morning of
the day Mersac was expected to return, a practical joker sug-
gested a scheme that was acted out with spirit by all of them.
They brought to her, first, insinuations of her husband's in-
fidelity; then flat statements attested by all of them; then
every sort of forged evidence. They said at the inquest they
would never have gone so far but that Madame Mersac received
it all with such smiling incredulity — oh, my brave Leonie ! —
that they were tempted to say more and more. They had no
idea she believed them ; they thought their joke a failure until
they found her dying.
" It was stated that when Mersac arrived, and comprehended
the meaning of their wild apologies and noisy grief, he sprang at
them like a madman. Then, catching sight of Leonie, white and
still, he seized a pistol, placed it at his breast, and fell lifeless
over the corner of the bed."
The three were silent for a moment. Daphne rose and,
passing by her friend, touched lightly, first her shoulder, then
her cheek, with the back of her hand. Then she stood by the
window. Outside the early winter sunset grew each moment
more brilliant. The snow-covered lawn shone with a pinkish
glow, and on the white-capped stone pillars of the gates gleamed
a faint copper lustre. Nature was deep in winter.
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GERALD MASSEY : POET, PROPHET, AND
MYSTIC.
BY B. O. FLOWER.
Fibst Paper, The Man and the Poet.
There are in our midst many poets who attract small
attention from conventional critics, as they have studiously
avoided the praise of conservatism, choosing the byways of duty
to the highway of popularity, and always living up to their
highest conviction of right. The poor, the oppressed, and the
sorrowing have been their special charge. Their lives have
been characterized by simplicity, and their words and deeds
have inspired unnumbered struggling souls with lofty ideals and
nobler conceptions of life. While the wreath of fame has been
placed by conservatism on the brows of many whose empty
rhymes have conformed to the dilettante standard of "art for
art's sake," these poets have quietly sung courage, hope, and
love into the hearts of the people, luring them unconsciously to
higher altitudes of spirituality. They have at all times pro-
claimed the noble altruism of living for others — the song of the
to-morrow of civilization. Amid the ambitions and jealousies of
life, the strife for fame and gold, they are not found ; but where
hearts are bowed or the poor cry for justice, their words ring
clear and strong. They are the people's saviours, for they help
the multitudes into the light of truth and up the path of noble
endeavor.
Among this coterie of chosen sons of God, whose unpurchas-
able love of justice and holy candor of soul have rendered it
impossible for them to yield to the siren voices of convention-
alism, no name is entitled to a more honored place than that of
Gerald Massey — the poet-prophet of our day, who, like the true
seers of olden times, has stood for truth and right, while less
royal souls have sold their heaven-given birthright for earth's
pottage. Had Mr. Massey chc on to devote his rare talent to
the enjoyment of the conventional world, instead of offending
the dilettanti by boldly pleading the cause of the oppressed ; had
he devoted his gifts to the creation of popular lyrics, instead of
767
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768 THE AEBKA.
compelling his readers to think upon the wrongs of those who
suffer through man's inhumanity to man, he would not have
remained comparatively obscure and b^en compelled to eat the
bread of poverty. For few men of our century have received
higher praise from leading literary critics than this poet of the
people. And had wealth been able to flatter him into a fawning
sycophant he would have become the idol of a gay, frivolous, and
amusement-loving class who imagine they are cultured.
But Gerald Massey was a man before he was a poet. His
love for justice was greater than his desire for the eider down of
luxury or the chaplet of fame. He was the son of a poor man.
He himself had tasted the bitterness of want. He possessed the
courage of an Elijah and the spirit of an Isaiah. He preferred
to reflect the best in his soul and devote his divine gift to the
service of justice, rather than conform to the vicious standards
which conventionalism demands as the price of popularity and
preferment. He championed the cause of the weak, the poor,
and those whose lives are made bitter by having to bear heavier
burdens than rightfully belong to them.
Now because of this magnificent loyalty to justice and human
rights, because he dared to assail the injustice of entrenched
plutocracy and the hypocrisy of creedal religion, he has been
denied the justice due to his fine poetic talent and his superb
manhood. But though ignored, in the main, by conservatism, he
has won the hearts of millions who love, suffer, and wait. And
I believe the future will place him high in the pantheon of
England's poets, because he has voiced the real spirit of the on-
coming civilization in a truer and braver way than many con-
temporaries who are basking in popular favor. The following
extracts from his writings reflect the dream ever present in the
poet's mind. They may be said to contain the keynote of his
creed : —
The first duty of men who have to die is to learn how to live, so as to
leave the world, or something in it, a little better than they found it.
Our future life must be the natural outcome of this; the root of the
whole matter is in this life.
We hear the cry for bread with plenty smiling all around;
Hill and valley in their bounty blush for man with fruitage crowned.
What a merry world it might be, opulent for all and aye,
With its lands that ask for labor, and its wealth that wastes away!
This world is full of beauty, as other worlds above;
And, if we did our duty, it might be full of love.
The leaf-tongues of the forest, and the flower-lips of the sod,
The happy birds that hymn their raptures in the ear of God,
The summer wind that bringeth music over land and sea,
Have each a voice that singeth this sweet song of songs to me —
" This world is full of beauty, as other worlds above;
And, if we did our duty, it might be full of love."
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GERALD MASSEY. T69
If faith, and hope, and kindness passed, as coin, 'twixt heart and heart,
Up through the eye's tear-blindness, how the sudden soul should start!
The dreary, dim and desolate should wear a sunny bloom,
And love should spring from buried hate, like flowers from winter's
tomb.
This world is full of beauty, as other worlds above;
And, if we did our duty, it might be full of love.
Were truth our uttered language, spirits might talk with men,
And God-illumined earth should see the Golden Age again;
The burthened heart should soar in mirth like morn's young prophet-
lark,
And misery's last tear wept on earth quench hell's last cunning spark!
This world is full of beauty, as other worlds above;
And, if we did our duty, it might be full of love.
II.
Gerald Massey was born in Hertfordshire, England, in 1828.
His father was extremely poor, and Gerald was compelled at an
early age to enter a factory, and thus help support a family which
knew all the bitterness of biting poverty. He received no in-
struction save that obtained in a penny school, but his passionate
longing for knowledge led him to many fountains of truth which
duller minds would never have discerned. The book of nature
attracted his eye, her smile wooed him, her voice charmed his
ear ; his mind unconsciously drank deeply of her truths. Like
many another poor boy, Mr. Massey learned the value of knowl-
edge. His mind became a storehouse for truth, rather than a
sieve, and his passion for the acquisition of facts, which was
awakened before necessity compelled him to enter the rank of
the child slaves of factory life, grew stronger as he advanced in
years. At a later period he became a deep student along several
lines of thought. An overmastering determination to possess the
truth and an unflinching loyalty to what he conceived to be right,
have ever been marked characteristics of the poet's life. In him
we have a curious combination. He is one of the most graceful
and charming lyric poets England has given the world. He is
also a seer and philosopher, a mystic and scientific student, a
prophet and reformer, while all his work reflects simplicity and
purity of life inspired by his high ethical code and lofty faith.
For years he has experienced remarkable psychic phenomena
within his own home circle. To him have been given tests and
evidences which have convinced him beyond all peradventure of
doubt that his loved ones who have passed from view are neither
in the ground nor in some far-off Heavenly City of the Christian,
nor yet in the state of Devachan of the Buddhist, but are around
about him, in his daily life. He has had proof palpable and
of such a reason-compelling character as to leave no doubt in
his mind that his dear ones live, love, and move onward. On
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770 THE ARENA.
this point Mr. Massey thus clearly and forcibly expresses his
convictions : —
My faith in our future life is founded upon facts in nature, and
realities of my own personal experience ; not upon any falsification of
natural fact. These facts have been more or less known to me per-
sonally during forty years of familiar face-to-face acquaintanceship,
therefore my certitude is not premature; they have given me the proof
palpable that our very own human identity and intelligence do persist
after the blind of darkness has been drawn down in death. He who has
plumbed the void of death as I have, and touched this solid ground of
fact, has established a faith that can never be undermined nor over-
thrown. He has done with the poetry of desolation and despair, the
sighs of unavailing regret, and all the passionate wailing of unfruitful
pain. He cannot be bereaved in soul I And 1 have had ample testimony
that my poems have done welcome work, if only in helping to destroy
the tyranny of death, which has made so many mental slaves afraid to
live.
The false faiths are fading; but it is in the light of a truer knowledge.
The half Gods are going in order that the whole Gods may come. There
is finer fish in the unfathomed sea of the future than any we have yet
landed. It is only in our time that the data have been collected for
rightly interpreting the past of man, and for portraying the long and
vast procession of his slow but never-ceasing progress through the sandy
wilderness of an uncultivated earth into the world of work, with the
ever-quickening consciousness of a higher, worthier life to come! And
without this measure of the human past, we could have no true gauge of
the growth that is possible in the future !
Indeed it seems to me that we are only just beginning to lay hold of
this life in earnest; only just standing on the very threshold of true
thought; only just now attaining a right mental method of thinking,
through a knowledge of evolution; only just getting in line with natural
law, and seeking earnestly to stand level-footed on that ground of
reality which must ever and everywhere be the one lasting foundation
of all that is permanently true.
On the vital social problems which intimately affect the prog-
ress of the race, Mr. Massey evinces the clear perceptions of a
broad- visioned philosopher. He observes : —
It is only of late that the tree of knowledge has begun to lose its
evil character, to be planted anew, and spread its roots in the fresh
ground of every board-school, with its fruits no longer accursed, but
made free to all.
We are beginning to see that the worst of the evils now afflicting the
human race are man made, and do not come into the world by decree of
fate or fiat of God; and that which is man made is also remediable by
man. Not by man alone! For woman is about to take her place by his
side as true helpmate and ally in carrying on the work of the world, so
that we may look upon the fall of man as being gradually superseded
by the ascent of woman. And here let me say, parenthetically, that I
consider it to be the first necessity for women to obtain the parlia-
mentary franchise before they can hope to stand upon a business
footing of practical equality with men; and therefore I have no sympathy
with these would-be abortionists, who have been somewhat too " pre-
viously " trying to take the life of woman suffrage in embryo before it
should have, the chance of being brought to birth.
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GERALD MASSEY. 771
With the keen penetration of a highly intuitive mind, Mr.
Massey long ago perceived that wisdom as well as justice demands
that woman be accorded a far more exalted place than she has
been permitted to occupy in the past, and he has been an untir-
ing advocate of absolute justice and the same wholesome freedom
for her as is good for man. I know of no writer of any age who
has taken higher grounds for true morality, both within and with-
out the marriage relation, than Mr. Massey. He is one of the
few men of our time who have evinced superb courage in demand-
ing that women be protected from involuntary prostitution
within the marriage relation. On this important theme he
observes : —
The truth is, that woman at her best and noblest must be monarch of
the marriage-bed. We must begin in the creatory if we are to benefit
the race, and the woman has got to rescue and take possession of her-
self, and consciously assume all the responsibilities of maternity, on
behalf of the children. No woman has any right to part with the
absolute ownership of her own body, but she has the right to be pro-
tected against all forms of brute force. No woman has any business to
marry anything that is less than a man. No woman has any right
to marry any man who will sow the seeds of hereditary disease in her
darlings. Not for all the money in the world! No woman has any
right, according to the highest law, to bear a child to a man she does
not love.
Our poet's high ideal of woman and her true position is
beautifully expressed in the following lines: —
My fellow-men, as yet we have but seen
Wife, sister, mother, and daughter — not the queen
Upon her throne, with all her jewels crowned!
Unknowing how to seek, we have not found
Our goddess, waiting her Pygmalion
To woo her into woman from the stone!
Our husbandry hath lacked essential power
To fructify the promise of the flower:
We have not known her nature ripe ail round.
We have but seen her beauty on one side
That leaned in love to us with blush of bride:
The pure white lily of all womanhood,
With heart all golden, still is in the bud.
We have but glimpsed a moment in her face
The glory she will give the future race;
The strong, heroic spirit knit beyond
All induration of the diamond.
She is the natural bringer from above,
The earthly mirror of immortal love;
The chosen mouthpiece for the mystic word
Of life divine to speak through, and be heard
With human voice, that makes its heavenward call
Not in one virgin motherhood, but alL
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772 THE ABENA.
Unworthy of the gift, how have men trod
Her pearls of pureness, swine-like, in the sod!
How often have they offered her the dust
And ashes of the f armed-out fires of lust,
Or, devilishly inflamed with the divine,
Waxed drunken with the sacramental wine !
How have men captured her with savage grips,
To stamp the kiss of conquest on her lips;
As feather in their crest have worn her grace,
Or brush of fox that crowns the hunter's chase;
Wooed her with passions that but wed to fire
With Hymen's torch their own funereal pyre;
Stripped her as slave and temptress of desire ;
Embraced the body when her soul was far
Beyond possession as the loftiest star!
Her whiteness hath been tarnished by their touch;
Her promise hath been broken in their clutch ;
The woman hath reflected man too much,
And made the bread of life with earthiest leaven.
Our coming queen must be the bride of heaven —
The wife who will not wear her bonds with pride
As adult doll with fripperies glorified ;
The mother fashioned on a nobler plan
Than woman who was merely made from man.
On the proper rearing of children he has words to say which
should appeal to every loving parent : —
The life we live with them every day is the teaching that tells, and
not the precepts uttered weekly that are continually belied by our own
daily practices. Give the children a knowledge of natural law, especially
in that domain of physical nature which has hitherto been tabooed. If
we break a natural law we suffer pain in consequence, no matter whether
we know the law or not. This result is not an accident, because it
always happens, and is obviously intended to happen. Punishments are
not to be avoided by ignorance of effects; they can only be warded off
by a knowledge of causes. Therefore nothing but knowledge can help
them. Teach the children to become the soldiers of duty instead of the
slaves of selfish desire. Show them how the sins against self reappear
in the lives of others. Teach them to think of those others as the
means of getting out of self. Teach them how the laws of nature work
by heredity. . . . Children have ears like the very spies of nature
herself; eyes that penetrate all subterfuge and pretence. . . . Let them
be well grounded in the doctrine of development, without which we
cannot begin to think coherently. Give them the best material, the
soundest method; let the spirit world have a chance as a living influence
on them, and then let them do the rest. Never forget that the faculty
for seeing is worth all that is to be seen. It is good to set before them
the loftiest ideals — not those that are mythical and non-natural, but
those that have been lived in human reality. The best ideal of all has
to be portrayed by the parents in the realities of life at home. The
teaching that goes deepest will be indirect, and the truth will tell most
on them when it is overheard. When you are not watching, and the
children are— that is when the lessons are learned for life.
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GERALD MASSEr. 773
These are twentieth-century thoughts, and they are pregnant
with the truth which will yet make the world glad. One thing
which impresses the reader, in all Mr. Massey's works, is his
sincerity and his abhorrence of hypocrisy or shams of any kind.
This thought, which is present in all his writings, is emphasized
in the following passage from his " Devil of Darkness " : —
The devil and hell of my creed consist in that natural Nemesis which
follows on broken laws, and dogs the law breaker, in spite of any belief
of his that his sins and their inevitable results can be so cheaply
sponged out, as he has been misled to think, through the shedding of
innocent blood. Nature knows nothing of the forgiveness for sin. She
has no rewards or punishments — nothing but causes and consequences.
For example, if you should contract a certain disease and pass it on to
your children and their children, all the alleged forgiveness of God will
be of no avail if you cannot forgive yourself. Ours is the devil of hered-
ity, working in two worlds at once. Ours is a far more terrible way
of realizing the hereafter, when it is brought home to us in concrete
fact, whether in this life or the life to come", than any abstract idea of
hell or devil can afford. We have to face the facts beforehand — no
use to whine over them impotently afterwards, when it is too late. For
example : —
In the olden days when immortals
To earth came visibly down,
There went a youth with an angel
Through the gate of an Eastern town.
They passed a dog by the roadside,
Where dead and rotting it lay,
And the youth, at the ghastly odor,
Sickened and turned away.
He gathered his robes about him,
And hastily hurried thence:
But nought annoyed the angel's
Clear, pure, immortal sense.
By came a lady, lip-luscious,
On delicate, mincing feet;
All the place grew glad with her presence,
All the air about her sweet,
For she came in fragrance floating,
And her voice most silvery rang;
And the youth, to embrace her beauty,
With all his being sprang.
A sweet, delightsome lady:
, And yet, the legend saith,
The angel, while he passed her,
Shuddered and held his breath!
Only think of a fine lady who, in this life, had been wooed and flat-
tered, sumptuously clad and delicately fed; for whom the pure, sweet air
of heaven had to be perfumed as incense, and the red rose of health had
to fade from many young human faces to blossom in the robes she wore,
whose every sense had been most daintily feasted, and her whole life
Rtimmed up in one long thought of self, — think of her finding herself in
the next life a spiritual leper, a walking pestilence, a personified disease,
a sloughing sore of this life which the spirit has to get rid of, an excre-
ment of this life's selfishness at which all good spirits stop their noses
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774 THE AEENA.
and shudder when she conies near! Don't you think if she realized
that as a fact in time, it would work more effectually than much preach-
ing? The hell of the drunkard, the libidinous, the blood-thirsty, or
gold-greedy soul, they tell us, is the burning of the old, devouring pas-
sion which was not quenched by the chills of death. The crossing of
the cold, dark river, even, was only as the untasted water to the con-
suming thirst of Tantalus! In support of this, evolution shows the
continuity of ourselves, our desires, passions, and characters. As the
Egyptians said, "Whoso is intelligent here will be intelligent there!"
And if we haven't mastered and disciplined our lower passions here,
they will be masters of us, for the time being, hereafter.
III.
In lyric verse Gerald Massey ranks among the first English ,
poets. His descriptions of humble life, portrayal of profoundly
human sentiments, and exquisitely delicate reflections of those
subtle emotions which are the common heritage of every true
man and woman, have rarely been equalled. They reveal the
power of the true poet. Take, for ^cample, the following stanzas
selected from " Babe Christabel," and note the purity, wealth of
feeling, and beauty of expression which clothe the simple story
of dawn and night in the human heart : —
Babe Christabel was royally born!
For when the earth was flushed with flowers,
And drenched with beauty in sun-showers,
She came through golden gates of morn.
No chamber arras-pictured round,
I Where sunbeams make a gorgeous gloom,
And touch its glories into bloom,
And footsteps fall withouten sound,
Was her birth-place that merry May morn;
No gifts were heaped, no bells were rung,
No healths were drunk, no songs were sung,
When dear Babe Christabel was born:
But nature on the darling smiled,
And with her beauty's blessings crowned:
Love brooded o'er the hallowed ground,
And there were angels with the child.
*****
The father, down in toil's mirk mine,
Turns to his wealthier world above,
Its radiance, and its home of love;
And lights his life like sun-struck wine.
The mother moves with queenlier tread :
Proud swell the globes of ripe delight
Above her heart, so warm and white
A pillow for the baby-head !
*****
She grew, a sweet and sinless child,
In shine and shower, calm and strife;
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GERALD MASSET. 775
A rainbow on our dark of life,
From love's own radiant heaven down-smiled!
In lonely loveliness she grew, —
A shape all music, light, and love,
With startling looks, so eloquent of
The spirit whitening into view.
* * * * *
And still her cheek grew pale as pearl, —
It took no tint of summer's wealth
Of color, warmth, and wine of health:
Death's hand so whitely pressed the girl!
No blush grew ripe to sun or kiss
Where violet veins ran purple light,
So tenderly through Parian white,
Touching you into tenderness.
*****
She came — as comes the light of smiles
O'er earth, and every budding thing
Makes quick with beauty, alive with spring;
Then goeth to the golden isles.
She came — like music in the night
Floating as heaven in the brain,
A moment oped, and shut again,
And all is dark where all was light
She thought our good-night kiss was given,
And like a flower her life did close.
Angels uncurtained that repose,
And the next waking dawned: in heaven.
They snatched our little tenderling,
So shyly opening into view,
Delighted, as the children do
The primrose that is first in spring.
The lines quoted above are taken from various parts of the
poem, and therefore do not present the unity of thought which
characterizes the exquisite creation as a whole. "My Cousin
Winnie " is another very charming poem, in which the author
describes the child love which throbbed in his heart, when, as a
boy, he basked in the smiles of " Cousin Winnie." I have space
for only a few stanzas. They will be sufficient, however, to call
up many long- vanished images to the mind of the reader. For
the chambers of the human brain are stored with springtime
treasures, which are forgotten until some magic word is spoken,
some picture flashed upon the mental retina, or a sound of long
ago is heard, and straightway the sealed door flies open, and forth
come trooping, as children from a country school, the dreams and
hopes which gilded life's young day : —
The glad spring green grows luminous
With coming summer's golden glow;
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776 THE ARENA.
Merry birds sing as they sang to lis
In far-off seasons, long ago ;
The old place brings the young dawn back,
That moist eyes mirror in their dew;
My heart goes forth along the track
Where oft it danced, dear Winnie, with you.
A world of time, a sea of change,
Have rolled between the paths we tread,
Since you were my " Cousin Winnie," and I
Was your '* own little, good little Ned."
*****
My being in your presence basked,
And kitten-like for pleasure purred;
A higher heaven I never asked
Than watching, wistful as a bird,
To hear that voice so rich and low;
Or sun me in the rosy rise
Of some soul-ripening smile, and know
The thrill of opening paradise.
The boy might look too tenderly —
All lightly 'twas interpreted:
You were my " Cousin Winnie," and I
Was your " own little, good little Ned."
*****
And then that other voice came in!
There my life's music suddenly stopped.
Silence and darkness fell between
Us, and my star from heaven dropped.
I led him by the hand to you —
He was my friend — whose name you bear:
I had prayed for some great task to do,
To prove my love. I did it, dear!
He was not jealous of poor me;
Nor saw my life bleed under his tread :
You were my " Cousin Winnie," and I
Was your " own little, good little Ned."
I smiled, dear, at your happiness —
So martyrs smile upon the spears —
The smile of your reflected bliss
Flashed from my heart's dark tarn of tears!
In love that made the suffering sweet,
My blessing with the rest was given —
" God's softest flowers kiss her feet
On earth, and crown her head in heaven!"
And lest the heart should leap to tell
Its tale i' the eyes, I bowed the head :
You were my " Cousin Winnie," and I
Was your " own little, good little Ned."
*****
Alone, unwearying, year by year,
I go on laying up my love.
I think God makes no promise here
But it sjiall be fulfilled above;
I think my wild weed of the waste
Will one day prove a flower most sweet;
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GERALD MASSEY. 777
My love shall bear its fruit at last —
'Twill all be righted when we meet;
And I shall find them gathered up
In pearls for you — the tears I've shed
Since you were my u Cousin Winnie," and I
Was your " own little, good little Ned."
Here again in "The Mother's Idol Broken" — which in ray
judgment is the finest work of this character written by Mr.
Massey — we find a depth of emotion, a beauty of imagery, and
a wealth of pure poetic power which would have done honor to
Tennyson in the best moods of the late poet laureate.
After describing the mother's joy over the advent of the babe
in the household, our poet continues : —
And proud were her eyes as she rose with the prize,
A pearl in her palms, my peerless!
Oh, found you a little sea siren,
In some perilous palace left ?
Or is it a little child angel,
Of her high-born kin bereft ?
Or came she out of the elfin land,
By earthly love beguiled ?
Or hath the sweet spirit of beauty
Taken shape as our starry child ?
With mystical faint fragrance,
Our house of life she filled —
Revealed each hour some fairy tower,
Where winged hopes might build.
We saw — though none like us might see —
Such precious promise pearled
Upon the petals of our wee
White Rose of all the world!
Our Rose was but in blossom;
Our life was but in spring;
When down the solemn midnight
We heard the spirits sing:
" Another bud of infancy.
With holy dews impearled"
And in their hands they bore our wee
White Rose of all the world.
She came like April, who with tender grace
Smiles in earth's face, and sets upon her breast
The bud of all her glory yet to come,
Then bursts in tears, and takes her sorrowful leave.
She brought heaven to us just within the space
Of the dear depths of her large, dream-like eyes,
Then o'er the vista fell the death veil dark.
She only caught three words of human speech:
One for her mother, one for me, and one
She crowed with, for the fields and open air.
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778 THE ARENA.
That last she sighed with a sharp farewell pathos
A minute ere she left the house of life,
To come for kisses never any more.
Pale Blossom ! how she leaned in love to us !
And how we feared a hand might reach from heaven
To pluck our sweetest flower, our loveliest flower
Of life, that sprang from lowliest root of love I
Some tender trouble in her eyes complained
Of life's rude stream, as meek forget-me-nots
Make sweet appeal when winds and waters fret.
And oft she looked upon us with sad eyes,
As for the coming of the Unseen Hand.
We saw but feared to speak of her strange beauty,
As some hushed bird that dares not sing V the night,
Lest lurking foe should find its secret place,
And seize it through the dark. With twin-love's strength
All crowded in the softest nestling-touch,
We fenced her round, exchanging silent looks.
We went about the house with listening hearts,
That kept the watch for danger's stealth i est step.
Our spirits felt the shadow ere it fell.
*****
The mornings came, with all their glory on;
Birds, brooks, and bees were singing in the sun,
Earth's blithe heart breathing bloom into her face,
The flowers all crowding up like memories
Of lovelier life in some forgotten world,
Or dreams of peace and beauty yet to come.
The soft south breezes rocked the baby buds
In fondling arms upon a balmy breast;
And all was gay as universal life
Swam down the stream that glads the City of God.
But we lay dark where Death had struck us down
With that stern blow which made us bleed within,
Aud bow while the Inevitable went by.
*****
This is a curl of little Marian's hair!
A ring of sinless gold that weds two worlds!
Poetic genius of a high order is displayed in this remarkable
production, and though the extracts given above carry with them
the spirit of the poem, they are only threads in what, when taken
as a whole, is a cloth of many tints, rich in color and tine in
texture.
Seldom do we find anything so pure and sweet as the follow-
ing lines taken from " Wedded Love," in which the poet gives
us a page from his own heart and home life : —
My life ran like a river in rocky ways,
And seaward dashed, a sounding cataract!
But thine was like a quiet lake of beauty,
Soft-shadowed round by gracious influences,
That gathers silently its wealth of earth,
And woos heaven till it melts down into it.
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GEEALD MASSEY; 779
They mingled : and the glory and the calm
Closed round me, brooding into perfect rest.
Oh, blessings on thy true and tender heart!
How it hath gone forth like the dove of old,
To bring some leaf of promise in life's deluge!
Thou hast a strong up-soaring tendency,
That bears me Godward, as the stalwart oak
Uplifts the clinging vine, and gives it growth.
Thy reverent heart familiarly doth take
Unconscious clasp of high and holy things,
And trusteth where it may not understand.
We have had sorrows, love 1 and wept the tears
That run the rose-hue from the cheeks of life;
But grief hath jewels as night hath her stars,
And she revealeth what we ne'er had known,
With joy's wreath tumbled o'er our blinded eyes.
The heart is like an instrument whose strings
Steal nobler music from life's many frets;
The golden threads are spun through suffering's fire,
Wherewith the marriage robes for heaven are woven;
And all the rarest hues of human life
Take radiance, and are rainbowed out in tears.
Thou'rt little changed, dear love! since we were wed.
Thy beauty hath cSmaxed like a crescent moon,
With glory greatening to the golden full.
Thy flowers of spring are crowned with summer fruits,
And thou hast put a queenlier presence on
With thy regality of womanhood!
Yet time but toucheth thee with mellowing shades
That set thy graces in a wealthier light.
Thy soul still looks with its rare smile of love,
From the gate beautiful of its palace home,
Fair as the spirit of the evening star,
That lights its glory as a radiant porch
To beacon earth with brighter glimpse of heaven.
We are poor in this world's wealth, but rich in love;
And they who love feel rich in everything.
» * * * •
Oh, let us walk the world, so that our love
Burn like a blessed beacon, beautiful
Upon the walls of life's surrounding dark.
Ah! what a world 'twould be if love like ours
Made heaven in human hearts, and clothed with smiles
The sweet sad face of our humanity!
Many of Europe's most competent and conscientious critics
have expressed their appreciation of the high order of much of
Mr. Massey's poetical work. "I rejoice," wrote John Ruskin to
the poet, " in acknowledging my own debt of gratitude to you
for many an encouraging and noble thought, and expression of
thought. Few national services can be greater than that you
have rendered." Thomas Aird, in a critical review, observed :
"Gerald Massey belongs to the new choir. Pathos and love
and a purple flush of beauty steep the color of all his songs."
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780 THE ARENA.
The eminent essayist, Walter Bagehot, in criticising Mr. Massey's
work, said : " His descriptions of nature show a close observer
of her ways, and a delicate appreciation of her beauties. His
images, however subtle and delicately woven, are never false."
As I have before said, there is little doubt but that Gerald
Massey would have become one of England's most famous lyric
poets, had he chosen to confine his gifts to subjects pleasing to
wealth and conventionalism; but like other royal souls, who
throughout the past have persistently held to the path of duty,
he chose to be loyal to truth and faithful to earth's oppressed,
ever preferring the bread of poverty with the approval of his
highest self, to the applause of the dilettanti with a life of com-
parative ease. Such spirits are rarely appreciated until they
have passed from earth. They belong to the Royalty of Nature ;
they are in truth the Sons of God.
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INDEX TO THE EIGHTH VOLUME OF
THE AEENA.
Adams. Mary Newbury, Our Na-
tional Flower. 105.
Adee. Hon. A. A., Bacon-Shake-
speare Case. 375.
Aionian Punishment Not Eternal. 577.
Allen. Rev. T. E., Reason at the
World's Congress of Religions. 161.
Armstrong. Win. J., Mr. Ingalls and
Political Economy. 592.
Arsenic versus Cholera. 51.
Bacon-Shakespeare Case: The, Ver-
dict No. I. 222. Verdict No. II.
306. Verdict No. III. 492. Ver-
dict No. IV. 733.
Bates. Herbert, The Man Who Feared
the Dark. 496.
Bartol. Rev. C. A., Bacon-Shake-
speare Case. 237.
Bimetallic Parity. 151.
Blum, Ph. D. Emil, The Realistic
Trend of Modern German Litera-
ture. 211.
Brisbane. Albert, The Currency
Problem through a Vista of Fifty
Years. 467.
Brown. A. B., The Bacon-Shake-
speare Case. 737.
Brown. Geo. G., Christ and the
Liquor Problem. 201.
Buell. C. J., The Money Question.
191.
Caldwell. Joshua W., The South is
American. 607.
Campbell. Helen, Women Wage-
Earners. No. VI. 32. Women
Wage-Earners. No. VII. 172.
Can It Be? (Poem.) 392.
Carman. A. R., The Charities of
Dives. 248.
Charities of Dives. The, 248.
Cheney. E. A., Japan and Her Re-
lation to Foreign Powers. 455.
Christ and the Liquor Problem. 201.
Clark. James G., Our Industrial
Image. 286.
Coming Religion. The, 647.
Confessions of a Suicide. The, 240.
Continental Issue. A, 618.
Coulter. Pres. J. M., Our National
Flower. 92.
Craig. M. K., Our National Flower.
109.
Cram, M. D. C. W., The Slave Power
and the Money Power. 690.
Crissey. Forrest, Hosanna of Ka-Bob.
379.
Currency Problem Through a Vista
of Fifty Years. The, 467.
Dawson. Andrew H. H., The Bacon-
Shakespeare Case. 733.
Dean. I. E., Save the American
Home. 39.
Does the Country Demand the Free
Coinage of Silver? 57.
Dolbear. Prof. A. E., The Bacon-
Shakespeare Case. 369.
Douglass. Geo. C, A Money Famine
in a Nation Rich in Money's Worth.
401.
Dromgoole. Will Allen, Our Na-
tional Flower. 110. Who Broke
up De MeetV? (A Story.) 255.
Financial Problem. The, 314.
Fisk. A. C, Does the Country De-
mand the Free Coinage of Silver?
57. Some Important Problems Con-
fronting Congress. 338.
781
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782
THE ARENA.
Flower. B. O., Union for Practical
Progress. 78. Parisian Fashionable
Folly. 130. Pure Democracy verms
Vicious Governmental Favoritism.
260. Mask or Mirror. 304. Well-
Springs of Immorality. 394. The
New Education and the Public
Schools. 511. The Coming Re-
ligion. 647. Gerald Massey: Poet,
Prophet, and Mystic. 767.
Foreign Policy. Our, 145.
Frank. Rev. Henry, How to Rally the
Hosts of Freedom. 355.
Frechette. Louis, La Corriveau. 747.
Free Church for America. 630.
Freedom in Dress. 70.
Fries. Warner W., Can It Be? (A
Poem.) 392.
Gary and the Anarchists. Judge, 544.
George. Henry, The Bacon-Shake-
speare Case. 238.
Gosse. Edward, The Bacon-Shake-
speare Case. 369.
Gougar, A. M. Helen M., Is Liquor
Selling a Sin? 710.
Hall. Eliza Calvert, Our National
Flower. 113.
Hasbrouck. Joseph L., A Practical
View of the Mind Cure. 346.
Hathaway. Benjamin, The New Cru-
sade. 273.
Head. Franklin H., The Bacon-
Shakespeare Case. 236.
Hinton. Richard J., A Continental
Issue. 618.
Hosanna of Ka-Bob. 379.
How to Rally the Hosts of Freedom.
355.
Important Problems Confronting Con-
gress. Some, 338.
Inebriety and Insanity. 328.
Industrial Image. Our, 286.
In De Miz. 642.
Ingalls and Political Economy. Mr.,
592.
Innocence at the Price of Ignorance.
185.
Inquiry into the Laws of Cure. An,
430.
Insanity and Genius. 1.
Irving. Henry, 745.
Is Liquor Selling a Sin? 710.
Islam, Past and Future. 115.
Japan and Her Relation to Foreign
Powers. 455.
Judah. Mary Jameson, Three Gentle-
women and a Lady. 756.
Keeley, M. D. Leslie E., Inebriety and
Insanity. 328.
Kernahan. Coulson, The Confessions
of a Suicide. 240.
King, M. D. J. S., George Wentwortli.
633.
Knowledge the Preserver of Purity.
702.
Kruell. G., The Bacon-Shakespeare
Case. 231.
La Corriveau. 747.
Lawrence. L. L., The Bacon-Shake-
speare Case. 493.
Leach, M. D. R. B., Arsenic versus
Cholera. 51.
Liberal Churches and Scepticism.
The, 18.
Livermore. Mrs. Mary A., The Bacon-
Shakespeare Case. 495.
Lome. Marquis of, The Bacon-
Shakespeare Case. 226.
McCrackan, A. M. Wra. D., Our
Foreign Policy. 145.
McDonald. Arthur, Insanity and
Genius. 1.
McJimsey. E. E. E., An Omen.
(Poem.) 755.
McKenzie. Wm. P., A Free Church
for America. 630.
MacQueary. Rev. Howard, Moral and
Immoral Literature. 447. Richard
A. Proctor, Astronomer. 562.
Manley , D. D. W. E. , Aionian Punish-
ment not Eternal. 577.
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INDEX.
783
Marsh. Luther R., The Bacon-Shake-
speare Case. 371.
Mask or Mirror. 304.
Massey: Poet, Prophet, and Mystic.
Gerald, 767.
Medical Slavery through Legislation.
680.
Money Famine in a Nation Rich in
Money's Worth. A, 401.
Money Question. The, 191.
Monometallism. 277.
Moral and Immoral Literature. 447.
Morgan, LL. D. Appleton, The
Bacon-Shakespeare Case. 232.
National Flower. Our, 92.
New Crusade. The, 273.
New Education and the Public Schools.
The, 511.
Norton. Carol, Office of the Ideal in
Christianity. 294.
Office of the Ideal in Christianity.
294.
O'Malley. Charles J., Our National
Flower. 92.
Omen. An (Poem), 755.
Parisian Fashionable Folly. 130.
Pickett. Lasaile Corbell, In De Miz.
642.
Powell. E. P., A Study of Benjamin
Franklin. 477. A Study of Thomas
Paine. 717.
Practical View of the Mind Cure.
A, 346.
Proctor, Astronomer. Richard A.,
562.
Proctor. Richard A., Shakespeare's
Plays. 672.
Pure Democracy versus Vicious Gov-
ernmental Favoritism. 260.
Psychology of Crime. The, 529.
Ready Financial Relief. A, 536.
Real and Unreal God. The, 320.
Realistic Trend of Modern German
Literature. The, 211.
Reason at the World's Congress of
Religions. 161.
Richardson. Ellen A., Our National
Flower. 102.
RusselL Hon. Wm. E., The Bacon-
Shakespeare Case. 733.
Russell. Frances E., Freedom in
Dress. 70.
Sanders, A. M. Prof. F. W., Islam,
Past and Future. 115.
Savage. Rev. M. J., The Bacon-
Shakespeare Case. 492.
Savage. Rev. W. H., The Real and
Unreal God. 320.
Save the American Home. 39.
Scammon. Laura E., Knowledge the
Preserver of Purity. 702.
Schindler. Rabbi Solomon, Innocence
at the Price of Ignorance. 185.
Thoughts in an Orphan Asylum.
657.
Seven Facts about Silver. 418.
Shakespeare's Plays. 672.
Shaler. Prof. N. S., The Bacon-
Shakespeare Case. 377.
Sheldon. Wm. E., The Bacon-Shake-
speare Case. 494.
Shutter, D. D. M. D., The Liberal
Churches and Scepticism. 18.
Sidney. Margaret, Our National
Flower. 95.
Silver or Fiat Money. 567.
Slave Power and the Money Power.
The, 690.
South is American. The, 607.
Spiritual Phenomena from a Theo-
sopliic View. 472.
Standish. Hon. W. H., The Financial
Problem. 314. Seven Facts about
Silver. 418.
Stedman. E. C, The Bacon-Shake-
speare Case. 366.
Stewart Senator W. M., Monomet-
allism. 277.
Study of Benjamin Franklin. A, 477.
Study of Thomas Paine. A, 717.
Thoughts in an Orphan Asylum. 657.
Three Gentlewomen and a Lady. 756.
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784
THE ARENA.
Towle. Geo. Makepeace, The Bacon-
Shakespeare Case. 494.
Trumbull. M. M., Judge Gary and
the Anarchists. 544.
Union for Practical Progress. 78.
Van Denburg, A. M. M. W., An In-
quiry into the Laws' of Cure. 430.
Van Ornum. W. H., A Ready Finan-
cial Relief. 536.
Vincent. C, Bimetallic Parity. 151.
Wallace, D. C. L. Alfred R., The
Bacon-Shakespeare Case. 222.
Warner. A. J., Silver or Fiat Money.
567.
Weil-Springs of Immorality. 394. ,
Wentworth. George, 633.
Who Broke Up De MeetV? 255.
Wilcox. Ella Wheeler, Spiritual
Phenomena from a Theosophic
View. 472.
Willard. Frances E., The Bacon-
Shakespeare Case. 238.
Women Wage-Earners. No. VI. 32.
No. VII. 172.
Wood. Henry, Medical Slavery-
through Legislation. 680. The
Psychology of Crime. 529.
Wright. Gen. Marcus J., The Bacon-
Shakespeare Case. 493.
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